Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 11, 1990 TAG: 9005110660
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: AMETRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No one who read Bush's lips and the election returns of 1988 - or who remembers the disaster Fritz Mondale brought on himself by admitting in 1984 that he would raise taxes if elected president - can doubt that voters adore candidates who disavow taxation and despise those who do not; and no one can doubt that the success of the Reagan-Bush promises on the national level have provided an echoing shibboleth for congressional, state and even local political campaigns.
But the promise to maintain taxes at a low level - except for the wealthy, whose taxes were dropped to an even lower level - has become empty demagogy. At a time when national and local needs of all sorts were becoming crucial, and when increased military spending was creating unprecedented budget deficits and resulting in an intolerably burdensome national debt, a refusal to raise taxes has brought on a condition of national paralysis in which no one in political life at any level, except Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, is willing to state the hard truth and call for rational, responsible tax increases.
The catalog of unmet American needs scarcely requires reciting: The "war on drugs" is a dismal failure. The environment is seriously polluted. Our educational system is, by universal agreement, a shambles. The nation's highways, bridges and other public works are falling apart. Crucial medical and technological research is suffering. Poverty and homelessness are deepening. Federal efforts to deal with rapidly mounting medical costs are hopelessly bogged down. Infant mortality, teen-age pregnancy, health care for the elderly ill - all are suffering from want of funds.
It is nothing so simple as the platitude that "you can't cure social ills by throwing money at them," as many self-proclaimed "conservatives" maintain. These are problems that only tax money can even begin to solve; and it is greedy, heartless and complacent to pretend otherwise.
Yet Reaganomics, as carried on in Bush's tax aversion, has at least exposed a fundamental American contradiction. Americans hate taxes, even when the taxes they pay are the lowest of any of the Western democracies whom we regard as our peers. Recent elections convincingly demonstrate it.
At the same time, however, an overwhelming proportion of Americans of presumably reasonable, moderate disposition want the things only taxes can provide and say they are willing to pay higher taxes to ensure their continuation. Public opinion surveys equally convincingly demonstrate it.
In one breath Americans cheer when Bush promises "no new taxes." In the next they demand public services and protest loudly when these services are abridged or eliminated. They condemn politicians who defend taxes, but complain if the public goodies they themselves want and use are in any way diminished. They want felons jailed, drug peddlers punished, the air and water cleansed, the road and bridges repaired; they want better schools, safer streets, well-stocked libraries open at all hours, decent housing for their fellow citizens, food for the hungry, good medical care for everyone, a land purified of narcotics, veterans' care, elderly care, a chicken in every pot; and they say they're willing to pay for them. But then they withhold their votes from candidates who say they should, and bestow them on candidates who say they needn't.
A charitable observer would say, no doubt, that Americans are "ambivalent" about taxes. A less-forgiving view is that they are hypocritical instead, denouncing loudly what privately they demand. A third view, more skeptical yet, is that Americans have fallen victim to the great epidemic of our times: not AIDS, Alzheimer's, cancer or cardiovascular disease, but stupidity.
by CNB