By Lee Harrison, Chairman, Berkshire Brigades, the countywide Democratic organization
Ronald Reagan’s winning formula was simple. Tell people what they want to hear: You can have it all – great schools, roads and bridges, and very big military – without having to pay for it. Just cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy and live happily ever after.
Even though George Bush Sr., Reagan’s eventual Vice President, decried Reagan’s “trickle-down” approach as “Voodoo economics” during the 1980 primary, America fell for it. Then again with both Bushes, and for a fourth time in the fall of 2010 with the Tea Party carrying the Gipper’s tattered banner – except, of course, here in Massachusetts.
Outside the Berkshires, but inside the world of Fox News watchers, hardly anyone remembers that Democrat Bill Clinton repaired the mess left by Republicans Reagan and Bush Sr., and he did it by raising taxes! Indeed, Clinton left Bush Jr. a budget surplus and a roaring economy. So much so, Europeans began calling us a “Hyperpower.”
Huge tax cuts for the rich, two wars, a Lesser Depression, and one Tea Party later, our economy is on life-support, and the prognosis is not good. Yet, Tea Partiers, faithfully repeating Reagan’s mantra that “government is the problem,” thwart every attempt by President Obama to improve the economy and create jobs.
So it’s time to look behind the curtain to see who or what the Tea Party really is. And – surprise, surprise – it’s largely the same folks who brought you Fort Sumter, Gettysburg, and, oh yeah, Scott Brown.
While most people think of Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann as the face of the Tea Party, the states of the Old Confederacy are its foundation, aided and abetted by Rupert Murdoch’s oversized megaphone. As Michael Lind noted recently on Salon.com: “Today’s Tea Party movement is merely the latest of a series of attacks on American democracy by the white southern minority, which for more than two centuries has not hesitated to paralyze, sabotage or, in the case of the Civil War, destroy American democracy in order to get their way.”
Predictably, the four states with the most Tea Party representatives in Congress were members of the Confederacy: Texas (12), Florida (7), Louisiana (5) and Georgia (5). In all, 39 Tea Party members come from the South, 12 from the Midwest, 10 from the West, one from the Northeast – and none from New England.
What’s so strange about this de facto continuation of the Civil War, which by the way coincides with the election of our first black President, is the simple fact that while Southern states pay obeisance to Reagan by employing scorched-earth tactics to starve the government, they are the ones who benefit most from federal largesse. Indeed, Kentucky – the home of Republican Senate Majority Leader and obstructionist-in-chief Mitch McConnell and Tea Partier Rand Paul – got $1.52 back for each dollar in taxes it sent to Washington in 2005 (the latest data available). Massachusetts, by the way, got just 82 cents!
Pundit Paul Begala’s reaction: We should listen to the Kentuckians, who reject virtually all federal government spending. “Defund Kentucky. Cut it off the federal dole,” he says. The Bluegrass State is in fact “a welfare state.”
As proof, Begala notes that 80% of Kentucky’s Medicaid bill is paid by Washington, and more than one in five Kentuckians receives a monthly Social Security check, totaling $8.5 billion a year. Further, he says, “Washington spends over $2 billion a year on flood insurance for Kentuckians, $667 million in crop insurance, and $877 million in mortgage insurance. Plus the Bluegrass State is home to federal facilities ranging from Ft. Knox to the Department of Energy’s Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Paducah.”
So, in the end, Reagan’s heirs are nothing more than scam artists, holding our democracy hostage to extort billions of dollars in ransom from working Americans. It’s all unsustainable, of course – by design – and that’s the GOP’s dirty little secret. While they scream about the deficit, the true believers guiding the GOP don’t care whit about it, says economist Paul Krugman, “It has always been nothing but a club with which to beat down opposition to an ideological goal, namely the dissolution of the welfare state.” I guess we better not tell Kentuckians, huh?
Reagan’s legacy is one of compromise, something that those who hold him up as an example of conservative idealism, need to learn.
He raised payroll taxes that put Social Security onto a path of fiscal solvency for 50 years and contemporary conservatives (and low information/independent voters) need to be reminded of that.
He raised the corporate tax rate (yes, something he regretted) as a trade off to simplifying (and lowering) personal rates.
He greatly expanded the income tax credit for the poor–now the scourge of right, as they beat the drum that 50% of Americans don’t “have skin in the game” because they don’t pay federal income taxes.
I don’t disagree with your post and agree that this is the Reagan legacy. But I think it’s important to highlight other parts of his legacy, given the mind-frame of the neo-knownothing right wing of today. As some pundits have pointed out, if Reagan were on stage at these Republican debates, he’d be to the left of Jon Huntsman and would have been boo’d off stage.