Are Democrats Launching a New Playbook to Fight the Republican Agenda?

Yesterday, POLITICO reported that “Democrats are launching a tax-focused group as their newest messaging megaphone in an attempt to counter President Donald Trump on one of his signature issues.”

The nonprofit organization, Families Over Billionaires, will be led by Michael Linden, a Biden administration alum and a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He’ll have a generous budget (POLITICO reports an eight-figure campaign) to “attack Trump and Republicans during the looming tax debate in Congress.

I hope they’re not planning to return to the 2017 playbook.

I still remember the way some very high-profile democrats messaged their opposition to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) back in 2017. It was going to “blow up the deficit”, “drive up interest rates”, and lead to “crowding out” of private investment. It was going to mean that “our country will be living on a shoestring for decades to come because of the increases in the deficit that will result.” It was going to compromise “our ability to fund national defense” and leave Congress with “less room” to “repair infrastructure” or to “respond” to an economic slowdown. To borrow a phrase from our last president, what a bunch of malarkey.

Not only did the messaging fail to stir up any meaningful backlash against the proposed tax cuts, the predictions also turned out to be embarrassingly wrong.¹

I tried to persuade democrats to reframe their opposition to the tax cuts in this October 2017 piece I wrote for the New York Times. (Gift article here). I wrote:

Are the proposed tax cuts a huge giveaway to the rich? Most definitely. Will they, as advertised, create a booming economy with benefits that trickle down to everyone else? I don’t think so. Mr. Trump’s plan will widen the country’s already dangerous wealth and income gaps, and because the gains go mostly to those at the very top, the tax cuts won’t do much to promote broad-based consumer spending or overall job growth.

That’s enough to reject the plan. But it would be unwise to oppose tax cuts, or any other federal legislation, simply because they add to the deficit.

In recent weeks, I’ve seen history repeating itself as democratic lawmakers (and others) have started to complain that republicans are once again planning to cut taxes and “blow a hole in the budget.” All I can say is, Please Stop. As President Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney correctly observed, “Nobody cares.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that democrats roll over without a fight. What I’m saying is that the more they complain about the budgetary impacts, the more they are effectively pressuring republicans to “pay for” their tax cuts. And given that republicans have already come up with a whole slew of ways to do just that—i.e. by slashing benefits for the poor and working class—this seems like a really bad way to frame your opposition.

The reality is that there’s nothing democrats can do to prevent republicans from cutting taxes. They are going to do it!

But is there anything democrats can do to limit the size and scope of the tax cuts? With an effective messaging campaign, I think it’s possible to make this a heavier lift for republicans. If democrats can explain that these policies never work as advertised, that they betray the working class in order to line the pockets of wealthy donors, and that the so-called “pay-fors” will cause severe hardship for millions of American families, then maybe they can limit some of the damage.²

There’s a very good chance that republicans will have to settle for a package that is not fully “paid for.” They simply want to do too much on the tax side. Offsetting all of it is next to impossible. And they know it.

In fact, just this week I caught part of an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box where Becky Quick asked a republican House member whether he would vote for the tax cuts if they’re not “paid for.” He gave a canned, trickle-down response about growth and suggested they would pay for themselves. When Becky asked him what he would do if the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) disagreed, the congressman told her that CBO has been repeatedly wrong so that would not really dissuade him. I can already hear democrats sharpening their knives. “How dare you ignore our independent scorekeeper?!” But—again—think about whether an attack on these grounds is more likely to result in less ambitious tax cuts or more ambitious spending cuts.

So back to the Families Over Billionaires project. I hope it’s not just another Robin Hood organization that focuses on all the social programs the government could afford to sustain if we could just prune the progressive version of the Magic Money Tree.

Oh, and one more thing. If/when republicans announce that they want to abolish the debt ceiling limit, democrats shouldn’t raise a stink.

1. You may have noticed that Congress had no problem funding a bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIF) or spending trillions to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.

2. And they should be thinking about the inflationary implications of the proposed tax cuts. If no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security are all on the table—i somehow doubt it—then this is a conversation that must be had.