Enough!

About a week ago, Catherine Rampell, one of the Washington Post’s best and brightest young op-ed writers, published an opinion piece entitled “The GOP rebrands itself as the party of tax cheats.” Her essay began:

Once upon a time, Republicans portrayed themselves as the party of small government and family values. Recently, though, GOP leaders have been cobbling together a new coalition, welcoming insurrectionists, white-nationalist tiki-torchers and people who think Bill Gates is trying to microchip them.

The latest recruit to the Big Tent? Tax cheats.

Ms. Rampell’s excellent article delved into the issue of the approximately $600 billion of legally owed, but un-paid taxes of the wealthiest 1% in this country.  Putting this ghastly figure into perspective, she noted: “For scale, that’s roughly equal to all federal income taxes paid by the lowest-earning 90 percent of taxpayers. . . . To be clear, rank-and-file wage-earners are not necessarily more honest or patriotic. It’s just much harder for them to shortchange Uncle Sam.

She then went on to explain how Congressional Democrats were attempting to pass legislation which would make it far more difficult for the über-wealthy to “sneak unpaid liabilities past the I.R.S.”

Of course, keeping taxes on both huge corporations and hyper-wealthy individuals as low as possible is really nothing new. Remember the macroeconomic theory of the Reagan years known as “Supply-Side Economics” or its genetic model, the so-called “Laffer Curve,” which showed that lowering tax rates for the wealthy and the corporations they own, ultimately led to increased consumer spending, which ultimately raised tax revenues for the middle class? Although never referred to by name in polite company anymore, “Supply-Side Economics” is just as much an article of faith in 21st century Republicanism as it was 40+ years ago.

As the Biden Administration and a near majority of Democrats on Capitol Hill are hammering out the largest domestic spending increase of the past 80 years, Republicans have firmly mired their boots in hardened concrete. Whether or not they favor federal funding on dams, roads, bridges and the like, they are fully against raising taxes by so much as a dime in order to pay for it. They are planning on scaring the daylights out of working class Americans between now and 2022 by warning them that regardless of what the Democrats promise, they fully favor raising their taxes in order to pay for all the “ needless goodies” like universal pre-K, childcare, climate change etc.

Are the Republicans really that near-sighted and hard-hearted? Many, I fear, are. But many more, I firmly believe, have a different motive responding to any and all Biden proposals with a near unanimous thumbs-down: keeping their wealthiest mega donors writing all those big fat checks which keep them in office. Without corporate and PAC dollars, they might just lose their seats, their power and self-worth.

While pondering the venality of America’s billionaire and multi-centimillionaire class, I found myself wanting to get them - the fantastically rich - to answer a single question: “What are you going to do with all the additional millions your Republican lapdogs lay aside for you? How many more mansions, yachts or private jets do you need? Is an additional billion or two or ten going to make you any happier, healthier or more content?”

While pondering this, I found myself remembering a brief piece the late Kurt Vonnegut wrote about his late friend, the writer Joseph Heller, whose most famous work was Catch-22. Published in the New Yorker back in May of 2005 the “poem” was, in a sense, Vonnegut’s eulogy to Heller. It was simply entitled:

Joe Heller

True story, Word of Honor:

Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer

now dead,

and I were at a party given by a billionaire

on Shelter Island.

I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel

to know that our host only yesterday

may have made more money

than your novel ‘Catch-22’

has earned in its entire history?”

And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”

And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”

And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”

Not bad! Rest in peace!”

I can justs imagine some of the negative, name-calling emails I’m going to be receiving from some of my readers; otherwise good and kind people who go bat crap crazy when anyone even suggests that there should be some sort of limitation on unfettered, untaxed wealth. They will no doubt accuse me of being a naïve, idealist, a radical relic of the sixties who wants nothing more than to take away lucre from the rich and shower it upon the poor. They will likely remind me that they “. . .earned their own fortunes by their own ingenuity and the sweat of their own brows,” and that “. . . those who want riches should bloody well go out and earn it for themselves!” Sorry if I’ve ruffled your truffle, but to my way of thinking, its time to unstack the deck; to make it possible for the have-nots to climb aboard the stairway to the middle-class. And if building that stairway means allocating funds to healthcare, childcare and education; to creating millions of jobs through greater expenditures on climate change, clean water and clean air . . . so be it.

I do not mean to lump all billionaires and their “poorer cousins” - the multi-centimillionaires - into a single cauldron of cupidity. I am well aware of all the those hyper-wealthy souls who, at the urging of Bill and Melinda French Gates and Warren Buffett joined in and took the “Giving Pledge” to donate no less than half their fortunes to charitable organizations and causes either during their lifetime or in their wills. Thus far, the group has donated tens upon tens of billions of dollars to various causes and philanthropies. Ironically, one small snag has emerged: though they’ve promised to shed at least half of their wealth for the common good, many of the billionaires are richer than ever . . . this, according to the Institute for Policy Studies noted in a recent article. This piece noted that, “. . .while some pledgers earnestly intend to fulfill their promises, many are unable to because their assets are simply growing too fast.”

What a world!

While I do not hold out a great deal of hope for the most visionary and generous aspects of President Biden’s spending plan to be enacted, I do, nonetheless, applaud him and his supporters on Capitol Hill - many of whom, like Speaker Pelosi (CA), Senators Mark Warner (VA), Dianne Feinstein (CA), and Richard Blumenthal (CT) and Reps. Don Beyer (VA), John Yarmuth (KY), Suzane DelBene (WA). Scott Peters (CA), Hugh Auchincloss (MA) and Lloyd Doggett (TX) - multi-millionaires all - for trying their utmost to pass meaningful legislation.

They, like the late Joseph Heller, are fully in agreement with a truly important two-syllable word:

ENOUGH!

Copyright2021, Kurt F. Stone