Published in the Daily News, September 23, 2010
THOUGH I lead a progressive grass-roots organization, I’m a little embarrassed by the question that serves as a title for this essay.
For 25 years, I taught political philosophy, most recently at Temple University. The key to my teaching was to encourage students see both sides of every issue. I was always proud when my students didn’t know where I stood politically.
Teaching both sides of the issues rubs off. So, even now, I’m politically just a little left of center. I supported the Obama health-care plan rather than single-payer not out of political expedience but conviction. I believe that a hybrid public-private plan is most likely to give us the most effective health-insurance system.
So, I’m uncomfortable saying we are in the midst of a class war right now in America. But it’s time for all of us on the left, center and even moderate right to recognize what’s at stake in our politics this year.
The Obama administration has put forward a series of proposals on health care, financial reform, energy and taxes that are slightly left of center. They propose to use government to benefit all of us while making life a little easier for working people and the middle class. After 40 years in which income and wealth has become much more unequal – mostly because of changes in public policy – President Obama has proposed small steps that shift the balance back.
In response, the Republican Party has said no, no and no again. The party’s ideology is now shaped by radio hosts and tea party extremists who want to return to a mythical era in which government played no role in the economy.
But the real muscle in the Republican Party – the people who fund the fancy buses that take tea party members to their rallies – is the corporate elite.
Standing behind the tea party are the insurance companies that don’t want their profits limited by regulations that would stop them from abusing people. The financial firms that don’t want their profits limited by regulations that would prevent a recurrence of the abuses that sent our economy into collapse are there as well. And so are the energy companies that don’t want their profits limited by regulations and investments that would make it unnecessary for Americans to die to preserve our access to foreign oil.
The Republicans claim to worry about deficits when Democrats propose measures to stimulate the economy and protect those hurt by the recession. But their only positive message is extending the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 percent.
That wouldn’t help the economy because the very rich would save a large proportion of their tax cut. It would add hundreds of billions to the deficit. And it would be hugely unfair.
AN EXTENSION of middle-class tax cuts already benefits the rich because it applies to the first $200,000 in income for individuals and the first $250,000 for married Pennsylvanians.
In Pennsylvania, the wealthiest 1 percent – individuals making more than $1,165,065 – would receive an average tax cut of $26,361 in 2010 under this proposal.
But that’s not enough for the GOP.
The extension of additional tax breaks for the rich would give the upper 1 percent of Pennsylvanians a total tax reduction of $73,096.
And, if they return to power, the Republicans will go further. House GOP leader John Boehner and Pennsylvania Republicans like Senate candidate Pat Toomey are ready to privatize Social Security, putting our contributions in the risky hands of Wall Street, while raising the retirement age, which would hurt people who work with their hands and on their feet.
All these policies would benefit the tiny group of people who lead or own America’s corporations. They would hurt the rest of us. And, it’s not just a matter of income distribution. To create the economic demand that will get our economy moving again, we must bolster the incomes of working people and the middle class.
So if I’m a little embarrassed talking about a class war, the Republicans in Congress should be much more embarrassed because they’re prosecuting it. And it’s time for us to stand up so that we can tell our children we opposed what, to this point, we have been too reluctant to name: a Republican Party that is fighting a class war in support of, and funded by, the corporate elite.
Marc Stier is executive director of Penn Action, a grass-roots progressive political advocacy organization.