Utter Hypocrisy: The tax cut spectacle

And to think there are some people who actually wonder why so many people don’t vote. As far as I’m concerned the tortuous discourse and analysis that took place recently regarding the tax cuts demonstrated just how wide the chasm is between many of the politicians in Washington and the people they are supposed to represent.

I came across an essay a while back that pointed out one of the problems with representative democracy, which is essentially what we have here in America. The author of the essay- Stephen Shalom, who teaches political science at William Paterson University in New Jersey- wrote that one of the problems with representative democracy is that “…representatives, for many reasons, don’t, in fact, represent their constituents. Representatives say one thing to get elected and then change their positions once in office. They have no real connection to the hundreds of thousands of people they represent. Their different life circumstances lead them to develop different interests from those of their constituents.”

One of the life circumstance changes that takes place is that prior to being elected the representatives say and do what they have to do to get elected, and then once elected, they say and do what they have to do to stay in office. In an article titled Obama Caves on Tax Cuts, Endorses ‘Bush-McCain Philosophy,’ Ari Berman, a contributing writer for The Nation magazine, points out:

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama said over and over that he was running to “put an end to the Bush-McCain philosophy.” Campaigning in Colorado just days before the election…Obama clearly stated his opposition to Bush-era economic policies and ridiculed the idea that “we should give more and more to millionaires and billionaires and hope that it trickles down on everybody else. It’s a philosophy that gives tax breaks to wealthy CEOs and to corporations that ship jobs overseas while hundreds of thousands of jobs are disappearing here at home.” 

Some argue that President Obama’s compromise on the tax cuts could turn out to be political suicide while some argue that the compromise could turn out to be political salvation. Political realties change, sometimes overnight. What doesn’t appear to change so quickly is the powerlessness of the electorate to affect real change. There’s a difference between having the power to put people in and out of office and the power to truly influence policy. 

In a representative democracy the ideal is to influence policy through the folks that we send to Washington or our state capitols to represent us. One of the most disturbing viewpoints that came out of all of the analysis that was taking place was presented by Mr. Berman when he wrote:

Obama and Congressional Democrats bungled the tax debate from the start, even though it was clearly a winning issue for the president and his party. Even though everyone knew the Bush tax cuts were set to expire at the end of this year, Democrats failed to develop an overall strategy for this issue last summer or force a vote in the Congress before the election…Democrats refused to put the GOP on the spot or talk about the tax cuts during the campaign, blurring what should have been a core distinction between the parties; Democrats for the middle class, Republicans for the rich. 

This assessment was echoed in a New York Times editorial, dated 12/8/10:

By temporarily extending income tax breaks for the richest Americans, and cutting estate taxes for the ultrawealthy, the deal will redistribute billions of dollars from job creation to people who do not need the money. But the Democrats should vote for this deal, because it is the only one they are going to get. The president, and particularly Congressional Democrats, might not be in this bind if they had fought harder against the high-end tax cuts before the midterm elections.

In other words, according to these assessments, the Americans that President Obama said were being held hostage by the Republicans were in that predicament because he and the Congressional Democrats allowed them to be taken as hostages, which begs the question: How thin is the line between compromise and hypocrisy?