Democrats: Masters of Helping Without Being Seen
filed in Politics on Jul.14, 2010
For some reason, the Democrats have let themselves be bullied into secrecy. Irrational fears of being branded “socialist” have led the party to hiding assistance programs as byzantine tax incentives. This just doesn’t make sense.
As Yglesias writes about the recent HIRE program, an assistance program doesn’t win any political leverage if no one knows about it. This same thing happened with the economic stimulus credits last year: instead of just giving people money like Bush did, the stimulus plan called for temporarily reducing Federal payroll withholding rates. While the fiscal effect is the same, taking less money than usual hardly feels like a credit. It’s no wonder that few people even realized they were getting a tax rebate.
July 22nd, 2010 on 7:35 am
I am of the “democrats suck” ilk. It seems that people are divided into two camps (~statistical distributions, should not be necessary to state). I think it’s genetic. When insults fly (myself included..it can be fun, relieve stress), we should realize that we are insulting about half of the population. Also, I can think of no one who has changed from one mind to another through insults or arguments. The “my religion is better than yours” is fruitless, though it seems we cannot avoid going there sometimes. It seems people change their minds only from observing what’s going on around them and forming their own conclusions.