Edwards steps to the plate

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Due to low polling numbers, lots of folks have written off John Edwards as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. I think that is mighty premature almost a year before the first primary, and when Edwards starts his multi-state ad blitz you'll see a surge in his numbers. Right now, it's in his best interest to let the other candidates (read: Kerry and Dean) keep landing body shots on one another, and I suspect that is his current M.O.

In the meantime, he delivered a speech last week at Georgetown University that was the most cogent and powerful salvo on the economy and budget that any of the candidates have unleashed so far. If this is the tack he's planning on taking - and it does seem to be - then Democrats serious about retaking the White House ought to be paying attention, no matter which candidate they support. There is really too much in there to summarize it effectively, so read the whole thing. I'll excerpt some highlights.

Our great free enterprise system has been rocked by some at the top who put their own fortunes ahead of their company’s future and their employees’ hard work. Our democracy has been wounded by some at the top who put favors for the few ahead of what’s right for the whole nation. Worst of all, the character of our country has been betrayed by some at the top who want the measure of an American to be how much she is worth, not how hard or how well she works.

Here in Washington, some of our most powerful leaders stand accused of letting big campaign contributors write special favors into law. And tonight, a President and Vice President who have doled out special privilege more quickly than any administration ever will begin a two-week sprint to collect, in return, more special-interest money more quickly than any administration ever.

[...]

The President and I agree on one thing: this campaign should be a debate about values. We need to have that debate, because the values of this president and this administration are not the values of mainstream America, the values all of us grew up with – opportunity, responsibility, hard work. There’s a fundamental difference between his vision and mine. I believe America should value work. He only values wealth. He wants the people who own the most to get more. I want to make sure everybody has the chance to be an owner.

For a man who made responsibility the theme of his campaign, this president sure doesn’t seem to value it much in office. We’ve lost 3.1 million private sector jobs. Over $3 trillion in stock market value lost. A $5.6 trillion budget surplus gone, and nearly $5 trillion of red ink in its place. Bill Clinton spent 8 years turning around 12 years of his predecessors’ deficits. George Bush erased it in two years, and this year will break the all-time record.

Yet even with all those zeroes, the true cost of the administration’s approach isn’t what they’ve done with our money, it’s what they want to do to our way of life. Their economic vision has one goal: to get rid of taxes on unearned income and shift the tax burden onto people who work. This crowd wants a world where the only people who have to pay taxes are the ones who do the work.

Make no mistake: this is the most radical and dangerous economic theory to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy and shrink the winners’ circle.

[...]

This crowd is making a radically different argument. They don’t believe work matters most. They don’t believe in helping working people build wealth. They genuinely believe that the wealth of the wealthy matters most. They are determined to cut taxes on that wealth, year after year, and heap more and more of the burden on people who work.

How do we know this? Because they don’t even try to hide it. The Bush budget proposed tax-free tax shelters for millionaires that are bigger than most Americans’ paychecks for an entire year. And just last week, Bush’s tax guru, Grover Norquist, said their goal is to abolish the capital gains tax, abolish the dividend tax, and let the wealthiest shelter as much as they want tax-free.

Look at the choices they make: They have driven up the share of the tax burden for most working people, and driven down the burden on the richest few. They got rid of even the smallest tax on even the largest inheritances on earth. This past month, in a $350 billion bonanza of tax cuts on wealth, they couldn’t find $3.5 billion to give the child tax credit to poor people who work. Listen to this: They refused to cut taxes for the children of 250,000 American soldiers who are risking their lives for us in Iraq, so they could cut dividend and capital gains taxes for millionaires who were selling stocks short until the war was over.

[...]

First, I will ask Congress to cancel the 2001 and 2003 income, dividend, and estate tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in the upper two brackets. In these times of national sacrifice, we should not be asking less of the most fortunate. I agree with Bill Gates, Sr., the father of the richest man in America, that in a world where taxes must be paid, the people who inherit massive estates ought to pay taxes too. I agree with Warren Buffett, the shrewd investor and another of America’s richest men, who said that something is deeply wrong when a billionaire has a lower tax rate than his secretary.

Second, I will give America a tax code that rewards work, not wealth. Today, middle-class families pay income tax on their earnings at a rate of up to 25%, plus another 7.65% in payroll tax. Yet under the law President Bush just signed, a CEO who pays himself whatever he wants can sell millions of dollars in stock and pay tax at a total rate of 15%.

Let me say that again: Somebody who has worked long hours his whole life to save for his son’s college has to pay taxes at more than twice the rate as his boss. Where I come from, that man’s hard work means at least as much to the future of this country – not half as much – as what his boss does. After the biggest lapse in corporate responsibility in our lifetimes, we shouldn’t be letting a CEO who pays himself hundreds of times more than his workers pay lower taxes than the workers themselves.

Mr. President, I challenge you. Explain why you think a multimillionaire should pay 15% on his next million, while a fireman has to pay over 30% for each extra dollar of overtime. Mr. President, explain how you square that with America’s values.

There is significant hay to be made here. The economy stinks and that stink is starting to permeate every corner of the country. We are spending three billion dollars a month just to pay for the soldiers in Iraq, a figure that doesn't even include any reconstruction costs (like, say, the salaries we will now be paying to Iraqi soldiers and police). Those billions are borrowed from our future, from our children's future. Republican congressmen are openly soliciting bribes for favorable legislation. Everything the national Republican Party does reeks of contempt for average working Americans.

How do they continue to get away with it? Well, luckily for them, the arcana of fiscal and monetary policy are so far over the heads of most people, even well-informed and well-educated ones, that administration flacks don't even bother to try and justify anything in those terms. Not that they could. I meant to link to this Whiskey Bar post a couple of weeks ago, but got sidetracked by my non-online life. The post is one of the clearest, most succinct summations of the reasons why the economy is far, far worse than it seems, and likely to get worse still. It's a must-read. Must.

I used to get frustrated with folks who would argue that the deficit didn't matter, since we just owed that money to ourselves anyhow. That position belies a complete ignorance of monetary policy, but holds a certain seductive illogic all the same. But the truth is that increasingly we don't owe it to ourselves, we owe most of it to investors from other countries, as the article illustrates.

Bush can't run on the economy - it's shot. He can't run on success in Afghanistan - we cut and ran and it's back to a shambles. It's becoming clear that he won't be able to run on success in Iraq either, though he certainly intends to try. All that leaves him is fear, lies, and ginning up another war in time for the election. Make no mistake, that is a powerful combination, and one that could successfully get him another four years to funnel your money to wealthy investors and campaign contributors. But if the Democrats get on message and stay on message, they will take him down, because nothing has changed since 2000. The country is still split right down the middle.

If you are a swing voter, unsure whether you should vote Republican or Democrat, then you have been paying so little attention that you don't deserve to vote. The two parties are further apart than they have been in a century. The options are clear and stark. Bush has run our economy in exactly the same manner as he ran all of his business ventures - to wit, into the ground. He has alienated our allies, stuck our troops indefinitely in one of the most dangerous spots on Earth, and made the world a much more dangerous place for Americans. He has rolled back civil liberties and enshrined secrecy as the prime directive in all government dealings. He has turned the reins of government over to megacorporations while emptying the Treasury. Everything he touches turns to shit, folks.

Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is anybody?

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