{"id":7638,"date":"2006-06-09T10:16:13","date_gmt":"2006-06-09T14:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7638"},"modified":"2006-06-09T10:16:13","modified_gmt":"2006-06-09T14:16:13","slug":"krugman-on-how-to-talk-about-the-estate-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/krugman-on-how-to-talk-about-the-estate-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Krugman on how to talk about the estate tax"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, just enough senators had the good sense to defeat an estate-tax repeal yesterday, but today, [tag]Paul Krugman[\/tag] offers<\/a> some good advice about how to talk about the policy.<\/p>\n

On one side, a measure that would have increased scrutiny of containers entering U.S. [tag]ports[\/tag], at a cost of $648 million, has been dropped from a [tag]national security[\/tag] package being negotiated in [tag]Congress[\/tag].<\/p>\n

Now, President [tag]Bush[\/tag] says that we’re fighting a global [tag]war on terrorism[\/tag]. Even if you think that’s a bad metaphor, we do face a terrifying terrorist threat, and experts warn that ports make a particularly tempting target. So some people might wonder why, almost five years after 9\/11, only about 5 percent of containers entering the U.S. are inspected. But our Congressional leaders, in their wisdom, decided that improving [tag]port security[\/tag] was too expensive.<\/p>\n

On the other side, Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, tried yesterday to push through elimination of the [tag]estate tax[\/tag], which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates would reduce federal revenue by $355 billion over the next 10 years. He fell three votes short of the 60 needed to end debate, but promised to keep pushing. “Getting rid of the [tag]death tax[\/tag],” he said, “is just too important an issue to give up so easily.”<\/p>\n

So there you have it. Some people might wonder whether it makes sense to balk at spending a few hundred million dollars — that’s million with an “m” — to secure our ports against a possible terrorist attack, while sacrificing several hundred [tag]billion[\/tag] dollars — that’s billion with a “b” — in federal revenue to give wealthy heirs a tax break. But nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a matter of political rhetoric, I think this is exactly right. When we talk about a Republican plan to cut taxes for the hyper-wealthy by hundreds of billions of dollars, making an already ridiculous budget deficit even worse, it’s accurate but the argument sometimes has trouble connecting with the public, which can get lost in the numbers.<\/p>\n

[tag]Krugman[\/tag]’s approach, however, is more compelling: Republicans won’t spend $650 million on port security, but they will spend more than 500 times<\/em> that on yet another generous tax cut for Paris Hilton and those in her income bracket.<\/p>\n

Krugman calls all of this the “DeLay Principle,” because Tom DeLay once famously said, “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes.” I’d also call this a terrific example of Republican concerns on display for the nation to see.<\/p>\n

The GOP has its priorities; are they yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fortunately, just enough senators had the good sense to defeat an estate-tax repeal yesterday, but today, [tag]Paul Krugman[\/tag] offers some good advice about how to talk about the policy. On one side, a measure that would have increased scrutiny of containers entering U.S. [tag]ports[\/tag], at a cost of $648 million, has been dropped from a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}