Does the Public Really Believe?

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 08:57:13 -0400
> From: Ralph Sierra <ralph.sierra () erols com>
> Subject: Does the Public Really Believe?
>
>
> [Good column from today's Washington Post]
>
> By William Raspberry
>
> Monday, May 26, 2003; Page A29
>
> I don't mean this to be a smart-aleck question, but I do wonder: Do
> Americans really believe what they say they believe?
>
> Or to put it more honestly, do those people -- meaning people who disagree
> with me -- really believe what they say?
>
> Two circumstances prompt the question. One is what might be called "The
> Mystery of the Disappearing Weapons of Mass Destruction," to which I'll
> return in a minute. The other is the bill that President Bush is about to
> sign reducing taxes by about $350 billion. Congress has given him only about
> half of what he sought, but it's still a whopping amount given the parlous
> state of the economy. The president has advertised the tax cut as an
> economic stimulus and the people have bought it. Do they really believe it?
>
> I'm cynical enough to consider that the vote in the Republican-controlled
> Congress may have as much to do with politics as with belief: The Republican
> president wanted it and so did major campaign contributors.
>
> And the people? Rank-and-file supporters of the tax cuts offer two main
> points: that tax cuts always increase revenue (witness cuts under Presidents
> Kennedy and Reagan) and that if you give the people some of their money
> back, they'll spend it or invest it, either of which will stimulate the
> economy.
>
> If they believe this -- that it is the tax reduction itself, not the
> specific ways in which it is directed, that provides its revenue-enhancing
> power -- aren't they logically bound to keep cutting taxes, even to zero? Do
> they really believe that a stock market, stalled by the fact that there is
> so much investable money "sitting on the sidelines," will be stimulated by
> giving more money to those on the sidelines? And if they believe, as many of
> them claim, that Washington bureaucrats would only waste the money if we
> didn't cut taxes, won't the increase in revenue the tax cut is supposed to
> trigger give the bureaucrats more money to waste?
>
> Many of those who argue for this tax cut on the ground that it will increase
> government revenue were, in the first year of the Bush administration,
> arguing for tax cuts because of the record revenue surplus. If the
> government has too much, cut taxes. If it has too little, cut taxes.
>
> What I am saying is that, at least for some people, tax cuts are economic
> dogma, to be believed rather than understood.
>
> And so, it seems to me, is the case with Iraq's still-undiscovered weapons
> of mass destruction.
>
> People used to argue that it was Saddam Hussein's WMDs that made Iraq so
> dangerous to its neighbors and to America that a preemptive strike was the
> right thing to do.
>
> They still think the WMDs will eventually be found.
>
> They seem not to have thought of the question that seems so obvious -- and
> so obviously important -- to me: Why would Hussein, facing annihilation,
> take the bother to hide his chemical and biological weapons so carefully
> that we still haven't found them, while leaving his millions of American
> dollars right where we could find them?
>
> The WMDs, these supporters now say, are irrelevant. The new revelations
> regarding Hussein's brutality to his own dissidents are justification enough
> for what America has done.
>
> Both the war and the tax cuts began as policy decisions. The justifications
> for the policies were developed -- and changed as often as necessary -- to
> accommodate the policies.
>
> And a lot of people have gone blithely along.
>
> I wonder if they go along out of belief, out of deference to their leaders
> or out of partisan loyalty.
>
> Or maybe they don't go along as naively as I imagine. A recent New York
> Times poll that found two-thirds of Americans approving of the president's
> job performance also found that more than half of those polled have serious
> doubts about the tax cut.
>
> They hope it will work -- as, of course, I do. And it's a fair bet that they
> won't give the money back.
>
> I won't either.
>
> © 2003 The Washington Post Company
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39211-2003May25.html


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