Campaigning on the Tax-Cut Platform
ROBERTS, STEVEN V.
THE MID-TERM ELECTIONS Campaigning ontheTax'Cut Platform BY STEVEN V. ROBERTS Washington ?all political campaigns used to kick off on Labor Day, with a massive rally in Detroit's ic Square....
...Inthissortof atmosphere, taxes are among the few things voters can do anything about, and the issue becomes the outlet for a good many irritations...
...The problem is that they expected things to be even cushier...
...A year ago, official predictions said prices would rise about 6 per cent annually...
...A recent Roper poll reported that the gloomy outlook underlying this attitude was shared across the country...
...In the Times/CBS poll, a majority of those surveyed said they would prefer smaller government and fewer services, but in an important way they don't really mean it...
...The aggrieved taxpayers were not at Labor Day picnics, cadging free hot dogs from the union...
...but the members said, hell, no, we won't go slow—not when everybody else is getting theirs...
...Bill Brock, the GOP chairman, Steven V. Roberts is a Washington reporter for the New York Times...
...They are living better, but enjoy ing it less, for their expectations have not been fully met...
...Indeed, Proposition 13 appears to have more people dancing to a new tune this year in Washington than Saturday Night Fever...
...People have therefore started buying on the theory the situation can only get worse, and of course their actions guarantee that it will...
...now economists admit the figure will be at least 8 per cent...
...The universal explanation for this feat of financial prestidigitation is "trimming the fat," or "getting rid of the waste...
...The main target of this resentment is the so-called welfare chiseler: An astounding 42 per cent of those questioned in a recent New York Times/CBS poll favored reduced welfare spending...
...At the moment, it is a volatile mass of unhappiness, and there is no telling where, or when, it will explode...
...Administration officials seem helpless, as evidenced by the collapse of the postal workers' agreement...
...Brock has described these as "the consensus position of the Republican party"—which is another way of saying, don't give Jarvis a part of our action...
...In dozens of conversations around the country, I repeatedly heard: We were taught certain values, we believe in them and live by them...
...Mrs...
...But no, they don't want to work, it's too easy to get it from somewhere else...
...But economic self-interest remains a primary concern, and therein lies the main political story of 1978, at least so far: The real start of this year's campaign came back in June, when California voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, for the throngs that once filled Labor Day rallies today own homes, send their kids to college—and pay a lot of taxes...
...For one thing, the revolt against taxes is partly a revolt against inflation...
...Union leaders and Democratic party officials would get up and make traditional speeches about the perfidy of the Bosses and the purity of the Little Man, and the audience would take comfort in the familiar litany the way a churchgoer derives reassurance from the chant of the catechism...
...recently warned his party's Congressional candidates against accepting an offer from Jarvis that looked suspiciously like a political deal...
...This gap knows no party and no loyalty...
...White conceded, too, that the Republicans had done a better job of identifying with this group...
...His American Tax Reduction Movement proposes a $100-billion Federal spending cut over four years, and while nobody expects such a drastic measure to pass the Congress, no one doubts its potential for making trouble...
...You can vote against tax increases...
...Many taxpayers get caught in a paradox...
...All those Horatio Alger heroes who believe in hard work, it turns out, also believe they can get something for nothing: government services, without paying for them...
...The Republicans see tax reduction as the best horse to ride in this year's political races, and they want to garner as much credit as possible...
...In their minds, other Americans are not working for what they get...
...they're living off hard-earned tax dollars...
...The Little Man of the old days is the Big Man of the mid-term election year 1978...
...The message to all those Little Men (and Little Women) out there was clear: Vote your economic self-interest...
...From the poll and from interviews I have conducted, it is evident that people want to pay lower taxes, while keeping the same services—apart from welfare...
...of Delaware, and in measures like the one to slash capital gains proposed by Congressman William A. Steiger of Wisconsin...
...John C. White, the Texan who now heads the Democratic National Committee, told a group of reporters recently that Jarvis had turned the middle class taxpayers—those making between about $15,O0O-$3O,O0O a year?into the "battleground" voting group for 1978...
...Supportmy movement, said Jarvis, and I'll give you campaign money...
...Here was the model labor pact, designed to show restraint and moderation...
...This idea echoes through American history and folklore—the Protestant ethic, rugged individualism, Horatio Alger...
...They were conditioned by the prosperity of the '60s to expect that their standard of living, their purchasing power, would continue to climb steadily...
...And the favorite cover boy of the year is Howard Jarvis, who has now followed up his California triumph?sweetened with the conversion of Governor Jerry Brown to his gospel—by going national...
...Hence, despite the fact that Kemp-Roth has already been defeated in the House, the last week of September will see a lavish cavalcade of Republican stars traipsing across the land promoting it and the GOP...
...Why has this issue touched such a sympathetic chord...
...Americans, the survey reported, ranked the country at 5.4 on a 1-10 scale, compared to 5.8 five years ago, and looking ahead they brought it down another peg to5.3...
...you can't vote against the price of lamb chops or the light bill...
...In Moscow, reporters gauge the political winds by studying the lineup of Soviet officials on the Kremlin wall...
...This year I didn't hear about any major Labor Day political events...
...The list of malingerers is a long one, though, running from government bureaucrats with soft jobs to rich industrialists with soft loopholes...
...The difference today is that citizens like Mrs...
...As Cheryl Kramer of Eastman, Wisconsin said: "I'm raising two young children and I don't want to hand them anything, I want them to learn to work for what they get...
...Embedded in all this confusion is another paradox...
...But the twin evils of rising inflation and sluggish growth have sabotaged the illusion of inevitable progress...
...Alberta Sluyter of Denver expressed a common view this way: "I can't get anybody to cut my grass or scrape paint, and you don't need a bachelor's decree to do that...
...Second, for many middle-income taxpayers, the rules seem to be changing in the middle of the game...
...Their own approach is embodied in a bill put forward by Representative Jack F. Kemp of New York and Senator William V. Roth Jr...
...Here, they notice who the politicians pose with for pictures...
...they were out in their campers, grilling steaks: Most working Americans are living better than ever...
...Kramer feel they have been duped...
...they were out in their campers or sailboats, much too busy to bother with the speeches that turned out—and turned on—their parents' generation...
...But Jarvis and his movement have no strong loyalties to the Republicans, either...
...Although such a quid pro quo is illegal under Federal election laws, Brock had a deeper reason for trying to downgrade Jarvis...
...Adam Clymer, a colleague of mine on the New York Times, notes that all the Little People have grown big...
...The result is a frustration gap, a widening cleavage between aspiration and reality...
Vol. 61 • September 1978 • No. 19
