AMERICAN FUTURE

If there’s a publication further to the right than the National Review, I don’t know about it. Here’s what an NR editorial has to say about candidate Cain’s tax plan:

Cain envisions his presidency as featuring a quick move to the 9-9-9 plan followed by an educational campaign about the virtues of the national sales tax. He will have to move fast, since he is counting on the massive economic boom he expects his plan to create to enable him to balance the budget in his first year. None of this sounds very achievable, but let’s indulge the candidate. Even if one believes, as we do, that the mortgage-interest deduction should be set on a path to extinction, does its immediate abolition in the midst of a weak housing market seem wise?

And while the plan promotes new savings, it attacks existing wealth. In particular, it is a plan likely to arouse the ire of retirees. They have paid income taxes their whole lives and would now have to pay additional sales taxes on their savings when they try to spend them. On balance, of course, retirees would continue to receive a large net transfer of funds from the federal government. But why fight them in a bad cause?

Juicy excerpts from the published transcript.

On his 9-9-9 tax plan:

MR. GREGORY: . . . So you’re acknowledging this morning, which I haven’t heard you do before, that there are individuals who are going to pay more in taxes.

MR. CAIN: There are some, yes.

MR. GREGORY: And you think those people are going to rally around tax reform where the wealthy play***(as spoken)***less and middle-class and lower income folks pay more.

MR. CAIN: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: You think that’s going to create a grassroots support for this.

MR. CAIN: Oh yes, because, if they do the math, do the math on your individual situation, people are going to benefit several other ways other than whether they pay more in taxes.  The fact that they’re not going to have the cost of filing and compliance.  That’s a $430 billion bill for all of us every year.  So if they do the math on their individual situation, I believe that they–more people are going to see it’s advantageous.

I wonder how much of that $430 billion comes from lower and middle-class taxpayers.

On liberals:

MR. GREGORY: You’ve talked as well about liberals in the country.  You gave a speech in February where you didn’t mince words.  This is what you said.

(Videotape)

MR. CAIN: The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: To destroy this country.  How so?

MR. CAIN: Economically.  Look at this economy.  David, the engine of economic growth is the business sector.  We are growing at an anemic 1, 1 1/2 percent.  If we allow this economy to continue to go down, it would destroy our economic capability.  And, as a result, we are now looking at how much in defense we can cut.  That’s destroying it.  It…

MR. GREGORY: You think liberals actually seek to do that, that that’s their mission, to destroy the economy?

MR. CAIN: I–that’s the conclusion that I have drawn.

MR. GREGORY: Not mismanagement.

MR. CAIN: No!

MR. GREGORY: But it’s their mission.

MR. CAIN: It is their mission.  Because they do not believe in a stronger America, in my opinion.  Yes.

If you think that our government is dysfunctional and our society is polarized now, just imagine what things would be like if Mr. Cain were president.

It’s time to update Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, which won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in non-fiction and remains in print to this day.

Grover Norquist, president of the Americans for Tax Reform, a group having as its claim to fame the soliciting of pledges from politicians to oppose tax increases of any type for any reason at any time, opposes Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan. In light of the regressiveness of that plan (as I’ve documented elsewhere), you might expect that I’d applaud his stance.

If that were all there were to it, I would. But there’s more. After telling a reporter from The Hill that he would be “much more comfortable taking the present mess and chipping away at it like an ice sculpture to get it down to what you want,” Norquist goes on to say this:

The good news is the next Republican president only needs a forefinger and then pen and the capacity to hold a pen, he doesn’t need to come up with ideas. We have a Republican House, we will have a Republican Senate, they will fix the tax code and send them stuff to sign. He can fly around in a cool big plane and hang around the White House and he can sign the legislation that [House Speaker John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell send him, and we’ll be fine. [My emphasis]

A president without ideas? Why bother to have a president at all?

Then there’s Rich Lowrie, the wealth management consultant who crafted Mr. Cain’s plan. When asked by the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin whether 9-9-9 would “sock it” to the poor and middle class, Lowrie said it’s just “Washington thinking” to look at whether modest-income Americans will wind up shouldering much more of the tax burden. In addition, says Rubin, “[h]e repeatedly refused to say how much more of the tax burden would be borne by the poor and middle class than under the current system.”

Alas, for Lowrie and, by implication, Cain, Washington is filled with people who think too much. While Norquist opposes 9-9-9, he agrees with Lowrie that “thinking” is the problem.

And here I thought that the problem was a lack of thinking! I guess I’ll have to somehow “disenlighten” myself. If only I were enlightened enough to find a way.

The title of this post is a quote from the overview section of Edward Kleinbard’s (a former chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation) 17-page analysis of Mr. Cain’s tax plan. As summarized in the following abstract from his paper, Kleinbard’s conclusions are essentially the same as those of Bruce Bartlett’s:

Presidential candidate Herman Cain has proposed replacing current law’s income, payroll and estate taxes with his “9-9-9 Plan”– a 9 percent “individual flat tax,” a 9 percent “business flat tax,” and a 9 percent sales tax. This essay analyzes the components of the 9-9-9 Plan. Contrary to casual impressions, the Plan could be expected to raise substantial amounts of revenue, but does so largely by skewing downwards the distribution of tax burdens when compared to current law.

The 9-9-9 Plan functions as an effective 27 percent payroll tax on wage income. By imposing an effective 27 percent flat tax on wage income, the 9-9-9 Plan would materially raise the tax burden on many low- and middle-income taxpayers, who today face little or no tax under the income tax, and a 15.3 percent effective payroll tax burden. The Plan apparently offers lower tax rates (17.2 percent) for labor income attributable to owner-employees of firms, because they can extract their labor earnings as returns to capital.

The Plan operates as an ersatz variant on standard consumption taxes with respect to capital income, exempting normal returns on equity from tax and imposing tax at an effective 17.2 percent rate on economic rents. Finally, the Plan’s sales tax acts as a one-time tax on existing wealth. The relative undesirability of that consequence depends on what one chooses as the current-law comparable.

Here’s Kleinbard’s paper:

While Republicans oppose raising taxes on the wealthy, they don’t favor raising taxes on the less-than-wealthy. During their next debate, it will be interesting to see which — if any — of Mr. Cain’s adversaries take him to task for proposing a tax plan that would penalize the middle class and whether his popularity among Republican voters will drop as rapidly as it has recently risen.

Where did the 9-9-9 plan come from? Click here to find out.

I don’t know whether it’s surprising or not, but House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan “loves” 9-9-9.

“Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill conceived.”

Today’s Economix blog in the New York Times has an analysis of Herman Cain’s tax plan by Bruce Bartlett, who held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.

Every week, there’s a different Republican frontrunner. If nothing else, this indicates that the preference of Republican voters is based on the emotion of the moment, not on knowledge of the policy intentions of each of the candidates. Based on Mr. Bartlett’s analysis, I can’t believe that Mr. Cain’s policy intentions reflect the desires of more than a minute fraction of Republican voters. How many of them want a regressive tax system? 9-9-9 is a catchy slogan; if it became law, it would be a ‘gotcha for the overwhelming majority of Americans.

Here’s what Bartlett has to say:

Little detail has been released by the Cain campaign, so it’s impossible to do a thorough analysis. But using what is available on Mr. Cain’s Web site, I’m taking a stab at estimating its effects.

First, the 9-9-9 plan is actually an intermediate step in Mr. Cain’s plan to overhaul the tax system and jump-start growth. Phase 1 would reduce individual and business taxes to a maximum of 25 percent, which I assume means reducing the top statutory tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent.

No mention is made on the site of a tax cut for those now in the 10 percent, 15 percent or 25 percent brackets. This means that the only people who would get a tax rate cut are those now in the 28 percent, 33 percent or 35 percent brackets. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, only 4 percent of taxpayers pay any taxes at those rates.

As for corporations, Mr. Cain’s proposal is primarily going to benefit those with revenues of more than $1 million a year, because they account for 98.7 percent of all receipts by C corporations. (A C corporation is a legal entity separate and distinct from its owners that is taxed as a corporation; its shareholders pay taxes individually on their gains.) Those companies with receipts over $50 million account for 88.8 percent of total receipts.

Other business entities — sole proprietorships, S corporations (which have between 1 and 100 shareholders and pass through net income or losses to shareholders) and partnerships — would not benefit because they are not taxed on the corporate schedule. But they represent 92 percent of all businesses.

Second, Mr. Cain would eliminate all taxes on profits earned by multinational corporations outside the United States. It’s hard to know the impact of this provision, but according to Martin Sullivan, an economist with Tax Analysts, the 50 largest corporations in the United States generated half of their profits in other countries.

The actual benefit of Mr. Cain’s proposal would be much greater to many of them, because, according to Mr. Sullivan, while some of these 50 companies have no foreign operations, others derive 100 percent of their gross profits in foreign countries. In 2010 these included Philip Morris, Pfizer and Abbott Laboratories.

Third, Mr. Cain would abolish all taxes on capital gains. Such taxes typically generate more than $100 billion in federal revenue annually, according to the Tax Policy Center. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, two-thirds of all capital gains are reported by those with incomes over $1 million.

Mr. Cain says these three proposals, which he would put into effect immediately without offsetting the lost revenue, will jump-start economic growth. He offers no evidence for this assertion; it is simply put forward as self-evident. But the experience of the George W. Bush administration was that cuts in tax rates on the wealthy and on capital gains had no effect whatsoever on growth, according to the Congressional Research Service.

And this is only Phase 1 of the Cain plan. In Phase 2, the payroll tax would be eliminated, causing more than $800 billion in revenue to evaporate. The estate and gift tax would be abolished, further reducing taxes on the wealthy. And the 9-9-9 plan would be implemented.

It’s important to understand that the 9 percent rates on personal and business income would apply to very different tax bases than now exist. For individuals, the tax would apply to gross income less only the deduction for charitable contributions. No mention is made of a personal exemption.

This means that the 47 percent of tax filers who now pay no federal income taxes will pay 9 percent on their total income. And elimination of the payroll tax won’t even help half of them because the earned income tax credit, which Mr. Cain would abolish, offsets both their income tax liability and their payroll tax payment as well.

Additionally, everyone would now pay a 9 percent sales tax on all purchases. No mention is made of any exemptions from this tax, so we may assume that it will apply to food, medical care, rent, home and auto purchases and a wide variety of other expenditures now exempt from state sales taxes. This would increase their cost of living by 9 percent while, at the same time, the poor would pay income taxes.

The business tax in the Cain plan bears no resemblance to the present corporate income tax. The tax would apply to gross sales less dividends paid and all purchases from other companies, including investment goods. Thus, there would be no deduction for wages.

How benefits would be treated is unclear, because purchases of things like health insurance might constitute a purchase from another company and remain deductible. If so, what is to stop a company from paying its employees by leasing their cars and homes for them and even buying their food and clothing? That would reduce their taxable revenue.

The abolition of any deduction for wages is likely to raise the cost of employing workers, even with abolition of the employers’ share of the payroll tax. And since the dividend deduction doesn’t appear to be related to profitability, companies could borrow to pay dividends and still get the deduction. Even a novice tax lawyer could easily make a tax shelter out of that.

And here’s the kicker in the Cain plan. Phase 2 is merely a transition to yet another fundamental tax reform. In Phase 3, the United States would adopt the so-called Fair Tax, which would replace all federal taxes with a 30 percent sales tax on all goods and services. In a previous post, I explained why the Fair Tax is a bad idea. I went into more detail in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on July 26.

Whatever one thinks of the Fair Tax, it makes not the slightest bit of sense to have a plan that requires fundamental changes to the federal tax system twice to achieve its objective.

Veterans of tax reform attempts in the United States know reform is very difficult and time-consuming even once. If the Fair Tax is a good idea, Mr. Cain ought to just do it, without confusing the issue with his unnecessary and highly complicated 9-9-9 plan. After all, one of the prime selling points of the Fair Tax is its simplicity, and the 9-9-9 plan is far from that.

Because so little detail exists, it’s hard to do either a proper revenue estimate or distributional analysis of the Cain plan. It’s obvious, however, that Phase 1 would represent a huge tax cut for the wealthy at a time when federal revenues are at a historical low as a share of the gross domestic product and the economy’s fundamental problem is a lack of aggregate demand.

Thus the Cain plan would increase the budget deficit without doing anything to stimulate demand, because rich people can already spend as much as they want and are unlikely to spend more even if their taxes are abolished.

The poor and the middle class might increase their spending if they could keep more of their earnings, but they will unquestionably pay more under Phase 2 of the Cain plan. With no tax on capital gains, the rich would pay almost nothing, while elimination of all deductions and credits, as well as imposition of a national sales tax, must necessarily raise taxes on everyone else, especially those not now paying income taxes.

At a minimum, the Cain plan is a distributional monstrosity. The poor would pay more while the rich would have their taxes cut, with no guarantee that economic growth will increase and good reason to believe that the budget deficit will increase.

Even allowing for the poorly thought through promises routinely made on the campaign trail, Mr. Cain’s tax plan stands out as exceptionally ill conceived.

There’s another Republican debate this evening. These are the economic questions the Wall Street Journal (no link) would like the candidates to answer:

1. The unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1%. The U.S. isn’t adding enough jobs to keep up with the growth of the labor force. What’s done is done — the fiscal stimulus, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing, etc. What specific policies would you adopt today to quicken the pace of economic growth and hiring?

2. If raising taxes would be bad for the economy, how would cutting spending and eliminating government jobs now be good for the economy?

3. Housing remains a major drag on the U.S. economy. About one in five Americans with a mortgage owes more than the value of his or her house. More than half Americans with equity in their home have a mortgage with an interest rate above 5%, but hasn’t refinanced. Home-building is at historic lows. Can government policy do more to rescue housing? If so, what?

4. Several of you have expressed displeasure with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Who would you prefer to see in that job?

5. Will the middle class have to bear some of the burden — either in higher taxes or fewer government benefits — to bring the federal deficit under control?

6. Are there any tax increases of any kind that you would accept over the next decade?

7. What’s the best way to slow the growth of health care costs in the U.S. over the next quarter-century?

8. Mitt Romney backs the imposition of U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports if China doesn’t allow its currency to float freely on international markets. The Senate is taking up similar legislation. Do you support the pending Senate bill?

9. The living standards of our children and our grandchildren’s generation depend on investments we make today that pay off in future productivity later. What, if anything, should the government spend money on today with that objective in mind?

10. How specifically, if at all, should government policy respond to the persistent widening of the gap between winners and losers in the U.S. economy?

Here’s how I think all of them will answer:

1. Get the government out of the way.

2. Get the government out of the way.

3. No.

4. It’s a hypothetical question.

5. No.

6. No!

7. Get the government out of the way.

8. It depends.

9. Nothing.

10. Get the government out of the way.

What’s your guess?

That’s not me talking. It ‘s the conservative Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol reacting to Thursday’s Republican debate:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s official reaction to last night’s Republican presidential debate: Yikes.

Reading the reactions of thoughtful commentators after the stage emptied, talking with conservative policy types and GOP political operatives later last evening and this morning, we know we’re not alone. Most won’t express publicly just how horrified—or at least how demoralized—they are. After all, they still want to beat Obama—as do we. And they want to get along with the possible nominee and the other candidates and their supporters. They don’t want to rock the boat too much. But maybe the GOP presidential boat needs rocking.

The e-mails flooding into our inbox during the evening were less guarded. Early on, we received this missive from a bright young conservative: “I’m watching my first GOP debate…and WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!” As the evening went on, the craziness receded, and the demoralized comments we received stressed the mediocrity of the field rather than its wackiness. As one more experienced, and therefore more jaded, observer wrote: “I just thought maybe it’s always this bad…they’re only marginally worse than McCain and Bush.”

Now there are some legitimate excuses. With nine candidates on the stage, and answers restricted to one minute, it’s hard to really show your stuff. And two of the candidates—Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney—did provide respectable performances. But no front-runner in a presidential field has ever, we imagine, had as weak a showing as Rick Perry. It was close to a disqualifying two hours for him. And Mitt Romney remains, when all is said and done, a technocratic management consultant whose one term as governor produced Romneycare. He could rise to the occasion as president. Or not.

There’s no need for me to add my two cents’ worth.

From the equally (more?) conservative Washington Examiner, in “GOP disappointed in Perry, divided over future“:

“I’m very disappointed in Rick Perry,” says Tuny, of Vero Beach.  “I was wanting to come away saying he’s our guy, and I didn’t get that.”

“I liked him when he first came out,” says Narda, of Clearwater.  “The more I hear about him, the more I think he’s just a flash in the pan.  I don’t think he’s going to make it in the long run.”

“I was going to vote for him [in the straw poll],” says George of Tampa.  “I was pretty sure I was going to go for him, and then I saw the debate.  The immigration thing really irritated me.”

These are people who approached the debate hoping to see Perry do well.  Some were unhappy with his positions on immigration — his suggestion that people who oppose him on tuition subsidies for the children of illegal immigrants are heartless rankled many here.  But others were disappointed with his performance overall, and for them, a turning point came when Perry tried to portray Romney as a flip-flopper.  Nothing wrong with that — a lot of them do see Romney as a flip-flopper. But instead of mounting a crisp attack, Perry seemed to mangle the moment.

“I thought Rick Perry, when he was going back and forth comparing Romney’s flip-flopping, it’s like he lost his train of thought,” says Myra of Fort Lauderdale.  “I was sitting eight rows from the front, and you could literally feel the energy in the room change.  It was almost like a collective, silent groan.”

“The debate last night showed more weaknesses than anything else,” says David, of Mt. Dora.  “I was disappointed in Rick Perry.  It’s like the room just turned into a vacuum when he started getting confused with his great crescendo.”

Once again, there’s no need for me to add my two cents’ worth.

Finally, the editorially-conservative Investors’ Business Daily is worried.

Unknowingly, of course, the WSJ, in an editorial titled “Twist and Sell,” defended a major point in my criticism of the Republican letter to Fed Chairman Bernanke.

We agree with that policy point, but we also think the letter was unwise. The current Fed has been too political in our view, and Republicans should be speaking up for the cause of Fed independence rather than playing tug-of-war with Mr. Frank over Mr. Bernanke.

The WSJ and I share at least one thing in common, namely, support of an independent central bank.

Having received some flack over my umbrage at the GOP’s letter, I feel it to be necessary to more fully explain my position:

• I’m a strong believer in the independence of the Fed. Being independent doesn’t guarantee that the Fed will always make the right decisions; indeed, there are numerous examples of precisely the opposite. But this is true of any human institution. The Fed’s governors, unlike the Supreme Court’s justices, aren’t appointed for life. Despite this difference, the Fed and the Supreme Court are similar in the roles that they are intended to play in our society. While neither is, nor can be, totally immune to, or oblivious of, political passions of the day, they are – and are intended to be – less subject to such influences than are the two Houses of Congress.
• The Republican letter to Chairman Bernanke — which, notably, was sent only a day or two before the issuance of the FOMC statement – is to my knowledge the most blatant public attempt by either of our political parties to influence the Fed’s monetary policy in our history. Regardless of whether one concludes that the Republicans or the Democrats (or both) should be blamed for our dysfunctional political system, the fact is that the inability of the two parties to reach a compromise is putting our already shaky economy at greater risk. The letter admonishes the Fed to forsake any action that is not in accord with the GOP’s economic policies. I view the letter as a shot across the bow. It is a warning to Chairman Bernanke that, if the thrust of the Fed’s policies is not altered and the outcome of the 2012 elections is favorable to the Republicans, he may join the ranks of the unemployed. I doubt that Bernanke will be swayed by this threat. That is not the issue. The attack on the Fed’s independence – in full public view – is the issue. It is politically motivated. The Fed, not just the Democrats, is to blame for our economic distress. In other words, only the Republicans are blameless.
• Early in the Obama administration, Senator McConnell said that his primary objective was to do everything he could to make Obama a one-term president. He said this at a time when the economy was in freefall and the financial system was on the verge of collapse. A stated willingness to work with the president under what were extremely trying conditions would have been far more statesmanlike and might have boosted confidence in the country’s ability to weather the storm.  Nearly unanimous Republican opposition to all of the president’s proposals to help the economy — specifically, the stimulus program and the GM and Chrysler bailouts — and the inaccurate, repeated Republican denials that these programs had saved a single job, along with Senator McConnell’s statement led me to conclude that the party’s game plan was to boost its electoral chances in 2012 by doing whatever it could to keep the economy weak for the duration of the Obama administration.
• In both words and deeds, at a time of great economic peril, the Republican party has given precedence to its future over the country’s future. It has been unwilling to compromise, believing that, by not doing so, its electoral prospects are enhanced. Having successfully minimized the efficacy of fiscal policy to help cure our economic wounds, it is now – as evidenced by its letter to Bernanke – attempting to do the same to monetary policy. Thus, the letter reinforces my conclusion that the Republican party has decided that the weaker the economy, the better its prospects.

“I will not support — I will not support — any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans.  And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.  We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable.”

President Obama is finally acting . . . well, presidential. In his speech today, he takes on Speaker Boehner head-on:

“You know, last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner gave a speech about the economy.  And to his credit, he made the point that we can’t afford the kind of politics that says it’s “my way or the highway.”  I was encouraged by that.  Here’s the problem: In that same speech, he also came out against any plan to cut the deficit that includes any additional revenues whatsoever.  He said — I’m quoting him — there is “only one option.”  And that option and only option relies entirely on cuts.  That means slashing education, surrendering the research necessary to keep America’s technological edge in the 21st century, and allowing our critical public assets like highways and bridges and airports to get worse.  It would cripple our competiveness and our ability to win the jobs of the future.  And it would also mean asking sacrifice of seniors and the middle class and the poor, while asking nothing of the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations.

So the Speaker says we can’t have it “my way or the highway,” and then basically says, my way — or the highway.  (Laughter.)  That’s not smart.  It’s not right.  If we’re going to meet our responsibilities, we have to do it together.”

While talking about tax reform, he takes on the signers of Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise any taxes under any circumstances:

“It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million.  Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that, anyone who has signed some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out.  They should have to defend that unfairness — explain why somebody who’s making  $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that — paying a higher rate.  They ought to have to answer for it.  And if they’re pledged to keep that kind of unfairness in place, they should remember, the last time I checked the only pledge that really matters is the pledge we take to uphold the Constitution.”

As to those who claim he’s engaging in class warfare, he retorts:

“Now, we’re already hearing the usual defenders of these kinds of loopholes saying this is just “class warfare.”  I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same tax rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare.  I think it’s just the right the thing to do.  I believe the American middle class, who’ve been pressured relentlessly for decades, believe it’s time that they were fought for as hard as the lobbyists and some lawmakers have fought to protect special treatment for billionaires and big corporations.”

Obama has laid down the gauntlet. No more pulling punches, no more Mr. Nice Guy. It’s going to be a fight to the November 2012 finish.

No doubt about it — when it comes to bumper-sticker-sized slogans, Republicans have it all over Democrats. In fact, I can’t think of a single slogan of this type — or any other type — emanating from the Democrats. Whoever it was that came up with “it’s the economy, stupid” isn’t around anymore, and no one has taken his place. While I’m mindful of the fact that slogans don’t always win elections (“In your heart you know he’s right” didn’t propel Barry Goldwater into the Oval Office), part of the Democrats’ problem as we approach 2012 may simply be that they’re at the bottom of the class when it comes to sloganeering.

The nice thing about “class warfare” and “job-killing” is that they can be used to criticize any and all economic programs proposed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats. They’ve taken the place of the one-word slogans  “socialist” and “communistic” employed by Republicans to discredit programs set forth by Democrats from the 1930s to the 1950s. Well, that’s not quite true: occasionally, Obama is accused of being a socialist. His opponents on the Left take strong exception to this description.

Because of their wide applicability, “class warfare” and “job-killing” can and are repeated time and time again. When Congress is in session, it’s an almost daily event. When primary season is approaching, as it is now, it is a daily event. You’d have to escape the confines of the U.S. to avoid being browbeaten. Regardless of your political persuasion, these slogans have sunk into your subconscious mind. If you’re on the fence, it may tip you to the Republican side — that’s the intent, after all. If you’re against the president, your pre-existing condition is reinforced. If you support the president, you’ll experience a severe case of revulsion, and you’ll accuse — justifiably, in my view — the Republicans, not the Democrats, of instigating class warfare and killing jobs. It is disingenuous to argue, as Representative Paul Ryan did today, that increasing taxes on millionaires to help fund the jobs program “punishes job creation” and incites “class warfare.” During the Clinton era, tax rates for the wealthy were higher than now, millions of jobs were created, and there was no class warfare. Wealthy Americans didn’t wait until the Bush tax cuts to stop playing golf and go to work.

“Class warfare” and “job-killing” are the current examples of pure, unadulterated propaganda. What is the purpose of propaganda, especially propaganda that’s repeated over and over again? It’s to crowd-out serious thinking,  investigation, and consideration of the motives and programs of the propagandists. A media that thrives on 30-second sound-bites — the verbal equivalent of bumper stickers — thrives on it. There’s no equal-time provision for a party that gets an F in sloganeering.

The Democrats suffer from sloganeering-deficit-disorder. It may cost them the presidency.