Kennedy Emerges: Democrats Run for Cover
By David Freddoso
Posted January 18, 2002 11:46 AM
A portion of President Bush’s tax cut legislation, approved by a bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress last year, must be reversed to free up money for federal education and health programs, Sen. Ted Kennedy (D.-Mass.) said in a speech last Wednesday.
Congressional Democrats contacted by Human Events—especially those facing re-election this year or hailing from states that Bush won in the 2000 election—appeared fearful of embracing Kennedy’s proposal to repeal an already-enacted tax cut. Some flatly denounced the plan, while others equivocated or gave no comment.
Republicans, meanwhile, responded gleefully to Kennedy’s announcement.
Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, Kennedy said the federal government must spend more on health care and education programs. Americans in the top three tax brackets can help augment funding these programs, he said, if President Bush and Congress will agree to reverse some of the tax breaks they enacted last spring.
“Future additional tax breaks for the wealthy do not deserve a higher priority than strengthening education, or covering prescription drugs under Medicare, or protecting Social Security, or meeting other urgent national priorities,” he said.
According to a Kennedy spokeswoman, taxpayers in the top three income tax brackets will pay more under Kennedy’s plan than they would under current tax law. According to 2001 tax schedules from the IRS, the senator’s proposal would affect single Americans making more than $65,550 and married couples making more than $109,250 in taxable income. The plan would also rescind the repeal of the death tax, instead fixing the deduction for estates at $1 million this year and allowing it to rise to a ceiling of only $4 million by 2010.
The spokeswoman denied that the plan amounts to a tax hike. “No one is going to be paying more money in taxes,” she said. “What we’re doing is deferring the future tax cuts.”
A legislative sketch released by Kennedy’s office—based on the static analysis used by Congress to score budget bills—estimated that the plan would give the government an additional $350 billion in revenue over ten years.
Kennedy believes the September 11 attacks have renewed America’s desire for big government. They have, he said, created “a new recognition of the helpful role of government and a new readiness on the part of the vast majority of citizens to ask what they can do for each other and for our country.”
Kennedy took advantage of the waning war activity and the political news vacuum during the congressional recess to seize center stage and reassert himself as the Democrats’ leading crusader for a cradle-to-grave welfare state.
“The spirit of this new time is placing major new demands on our national resources,” he added. A government guarantee of adequate health insurance and early childhood education for all Americans were included in his list of demands, which he said the government “cannot meet while making all of the planned future tax cuts.”
Even Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D.-S.D.)—who in a speech earlier this month claimed that Bush’s tax cut had harmed the economy—declined to embrace Kennedy’s call for the tax cut’s reversal.
In a written statement, Daschle did not directly address the possibility of a tax increase, except to say that his own economic stimulus plan “did not call for either the suspension or delay of the tax cut passed last spring.” Daschle was in Asia and unavailable for direct comment.
So far, Hillary Clinton (N.Y.) is the only Democrat in the Senate besides Kennedy who has openly called for a repeal of the tax cuts. “Given where we are with the recession, with the war on terrorism, I just don’t think it’s in our best interests to go forward with the tax cuts,” she told NBC’s “Meet the Press” last month.
Among the 12 Senate Democrats who voted in favor of the tax cuts, six were quick to oppose Kennedy’s proposal when contacted by Human Events.
Maverick Sen. Zell Miller (D.-Ga.), who co-sponsored Bush’s tax cut last spring, released a statement sharply critical of the plan. “How can a family or a business make any long-range plans with a here-today, maybe-gone-tomorrow tax cut, a tax policy that has a perishable date on it, like a quart of milk?” he said. “For Democrats to even hint that we should somehow reverse it during an economic downturn is, in my opinion, about the worst move the party leaders could be making.”
Sen. Jean Carnahan (D.-Mo.) “thinks that the tax cut that passed is right for Missouri,” a spokesman told Human Events.
Sen. Max Cleland (D.-Ga.) is also “not interested in revisiting the tax cut issue,” said a spokeswoman.
Sen. Ben Nelson (D.-Neb.) said through a spokesman that “to revisit or change the tax cut should be a last resort when dealing with the budget.”
Sen. Tim Johnson (D.-S.D.) made a similar statement through a spokesman. The spokesman added that Johnson, who faces a tough re-election battle this year against Rep. John Thune (R.-S.D.), does not agree with Daschle’s statement earlier this month that the tax cut “probably made the recession worse.”
This is significant given that Johnson’s campaign will be partly dependent on the support it gets from Daschle, the state’s senior senator—and that one of Johnson’s campaign pitches is that keeping him in office will help Daschle remain Senate majority leader.
Sen. Max Baucus (D.-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said through a spokesman that he “respectfully disagrees with Sen. Kennedy on this. It’s not appropriate right now to go back into this tax cut while the country is in the midst of a recession,” he said.
John Breaux (La.), Bob Torricelli (N.J.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Diane Feinstein (Calif.), and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.)—the other Democratic senators who voted for the Bush tax cut—had no comment on Kennedy’s plan when questioned by Human Events.
House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) said in a prepared statement that “the Bush tax cut is not the tax cut we would have wanted. But the President has shut the door on reconsideration of his plan.”
Republican leaders flatly rejected Kennedy’s plan and indicated that they believed, despite Democratic disclaimers, that it represented the true sentiments of the Democratic leadership.
“Those who want to revoke the tax cut—basically raise taxes—are those who just don’t share my view,” President Bush told reporters on Wednesday.
In early January, responding to the Daschle speech that preceded Kennedy’s, Bush said, “[N]ot over my dead body will they raise your taxes.”
“If the Democrats succeed in raising taxes, they’ll cost even more Americans their jobs,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R.-Iowa), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a prepared statement. “I believe the American people will oppose Sen. Kennedy’s bad idea, and it won’t gain traction in the Senate.”
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R.-Tex.) said that Kennedy’s plan is “exactly the opposite approach needed to get Americans back to work.” He added, though, that he admired Kennedy’s candor in proposing a rollback of the tax cut, implying that Daschle supports the idea but is unwilling to discuss it. “Kennedy is simply explaining the unstated objective behind Tom Daschle’s criticism of the Bush tax cut,” said DeLay.
A GOP congressional aide who did not want to be identified, said that Kennedy had done Republicans a favor by advocating a rollback of the tax cut, thus creating a clear-cut issue for this year’s midterm elections. “It brings up an important topic that unifies every Republican going into an election year,” he said. He also said that Kennedy’s proposal has brought differences among congressional Democrats into the public eye. “These internal divisions within the Democratic Party can have an impact on their election bids,” he said.
In proposing his plan, Kennedy clearly appeared to be following a strategy outlined in a December memo issued by Democratic strategists James Carville, Bob Shrum, and Stanley Greenberg. “The public overwhelmingly believes the tax cuts should be delayed or cancelled,” the memo states. The authors cite a survey that says voters, by a margin of 55% to 38%, want to either cancel or delay the tax breaks passed last spring.
(Shrum debated Human Events Editor Terence P. Jeffrey on Kennedy’s plan on CNN’s Wednesday edition of “Crossfire.” For excerpts from that debate see page 3.)
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