POLITICS: Name That Tax
Fund, John H.
ITH THE DEMOCRATIC TAKEOVER of Congress, official Washington is lusting for tax increases--and coming up with new euphemisms to hide the ugly fact. It's time for a recap of the current state...
...InJanuary,heinsistedthatthechargeshewants tolevyonCaliforniadoctors,hospitals,andemployers to help pay for his $12 billion health-care plan aren't taxes...
...A massive tax hike ensued, followed by a recession and Bush's hu-miliating37percentshowinginthe1992electionthat he lost to Bill Clinton...
...Similarly, the Department of Health and HumanServicescaughtheatafewyearsbackwhenitwas discovered it was referring to patients who died in a hospital as "negative patient-care outcomes...
...Apparently, those subjects are both sensitive enough that bureaurcrats will labor as long as they have to so as to ensure as many of us as possible don't really think that's what they're talking about...
...Askedwhethertaxincreasesareonthetable,BushansweredthattheDemocrats"cancometothetableand talk about them...
...In D.C., that's code for opening up a discussion that leads, inevitably, to a tax increase...
...That early blunder hurt the governor when he later tried to institute the state's first ever incometax...
...Bill Clinton was luckier when he passed his own massive tax hike in his first year as president...
...J O H NH . F U N D M A R C H 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 5 9...
...So far, President Bush is being coy despite having takentheAmericansforTaxReformpledgeagainsttax hikes.TonySnow,hispresssecretary,declinestoflatly rule out a tax increase as part of a "grand bargain" to tackleSocialSecurity'slong-termfinancialcrisis...
...He recalls that in May 1990, President George H. W. Bush was asked at a news conference about his famous"readmylips,nonewtaxes"campaignpledge...
...So if just saying you are talking to pro-tax increase legislators is actually a euphemism for someone who may be contemplating raising taxes, what P O L I T I C S 5 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R M A R C H 2 0 0 7 NameThatTax Wby John H. Fund other evasions might we hear in coming months...
...Fees should only cover the actual cost of providing the service...
...Budget Director Richard Darmanputoutthewordthatwhatthepresidenthad agreed to was really just some "revenue enhancements...
...No,it'safeeincreasetocorrect an inequity," Ferguson said...
...But the topper came when he tooktotheSenatefloorandreferredtohistaxpackage as a mere "improvement in the revenue mechanism," conjuring up benign images of a mechanic in a garage tightening a few screws...
...In that pre-Internet age, the lamestream media was able to get away with more cheerleading for tax hikes...
...Doleprovedtobeamasteratcomingupwithpretty or evasive words to disguise the distasteful truth that the wallets of citizens were about to be gored...
...His efforts were undermined when John Ferguson, his financedirector,insistedthegovernor'sproposaltodoubletheamountofmoneysomecorporationspaidtothe statewasn'tataxincrease...
...Bush aides bravely tried to claim what they had done wasn't a tax increase...
...Callers to talk shows wanted to know to what state office they could go to get their loan payments back--perhaps with interest?Washington along with many state capitals has a culture that is so marinated in weasel words and obfuscation that as columnist Gene Weingarten puts it, "we often fail to notice that, for example, `Institute' almost always means `Lobby.'" Tax-writing committeesroutinelytrytomakesuretaxesaremorebenignly described as "user fees...
...Take Don Sundquist, who tried repeatedly without success to raise taxes as the Republican governor of Tennessee between 1999 and 2003...
...Bushhimselfsaysheiswillingtotalk...
...Idon'tsee how you can move forward without people feeling comfortableaboutputtingideasonthetable,"hesays...
...Whencriticsquicklyblewthecoveroffofthat euphemism, Darman aides came back with "receipts strengthening...
...I haven't heard any `read my lips,'" said the reporter...
...It goes backtohealthcare...
...I know, because I was there the last timethishappened...
...That didn't fly either...
...To that the president responded, referring to the taxeager Democrats, "No, you haven't heard it, because I'm going to sit down and talk to them...
...SIMILARLY, GOV...
...His opponent was Bob Dole, a grizzled 73-year-old former chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who had zero credibility with manyconservatives.NewtGingrichhadoncefamously tagged him as "the tax collector for the welfare state," after he tried to bully President Reagan into a major tax increase late in Reagan's first term...
...Clinton caught another lucky break when he ran for re-election in 1996...
...That's in spite of the fact that a fee, properly defined, is something the governmentchargesyouinexchangefordirectlyprovidinga service, i.e., a payment to enter a park...
...Of course, what he was really doingwasapplyingthescrewstothetaxpayer...
...It is not a tax, just a loan, because it does not go for general [expenditures]," he told reporters...
...He frequentlyreferredtohistaxhikeasaneedtodipinto "last-resort revenues...
...Some chief executives have come to grief when they've tried to be too cute by half in covering their tax increase tracks...
...ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER is in hot water over his own version of tax doublespeak...
...denizens ever look up and notice, as when it was found out in the 1970s that the Central Intelligence Agency had dubbed its working group on assassinations the "Health Alteration Committee...
...Marsha Blackburn, a congresswoman who was in the state senate at the time, recalls, "He was laughed off the floor and ridiculed by talk radio...
...John H. Fund, The American Spectator's Politics columnist, is author of Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy (Encounter Books...
...Thosewords,`negotiations,' `process,' and `everything on the table'--are, in fact, the magic words, the words that the Democrats have been waiting to hear," he told me...
...JimPinkerton,whowasaWhiteHouseaideinthe first Bush administration and had an office across the hall from George W. Bush during the 1988 Bush presidentialcampaign,isveryclear...
...Some gullible reporters didn't even flinch when "Slick Willie" characterized his tax hikes as "contributions" or "investments in our future...
...It's said that death and taxes are both inevitable...
...That also didn't pass the laugh test...
...It's only when bureaucratic word-shifters go way out of bounds that D.C...
...It's time for a recap of the current state of play on tax hikes,aswellasatouroftheeuphemisms--termsthat soften reality--that will be used to obscure what might happen soon...
Vol. 40 • March 2007 • No. 2
