Tax Cuts or Abortion Rights

Kevin Drum wondered the other day "is there any subject among liberals that has the same totemic appeal as tax cutting does to conservatives?" Daniel Drezner suggested a response:

There's an easy and a hard answer. The easy answer is what's enforced ruthlessly right now vs. what's been enforced ruthlessly over the past two decades. I think I have at least one answer to the former question (don't touch Social Security). My only answer for the latter would be abortion rights.

I don't think the abortion situation is analogous at all. It's true that fealty to a pretty strong form of the pro-choice orthodoxy is considered absolutely vital to being a Democratic presidential nominee, but below that level there's considerable tolerance for deviation from the reproductive freedom line. I understand why pro-life activists aren't Harry Reid enthusiasts, but the man is the Majority Leader of the US Senate, and he's certainly pro-life enough to call into question the idea that the pro-choice line is "ruthlessly enforced" inside the progressive coalition. David Bonior served as the pro-life number two House Democrat for over a decade and now plays a prominent role in John Edwards' campaign. And beyond that, the view that pro-choice groups hold too much sway over the Democratic Party is something that's regularly voiced by liberal writers and in liberal publications without them getting run out of town.

Social Security, in recent years, seems much closer to the mark since it seems to me that there are a number of people who favored some form of Social Security privatization in the 1990s but who were basically frightened (a good thing, it seems to me) out of saying so in 2005 out of fear that going off-message would severely damage their chances of playing a role in Democratic politics. That, though, is a phenomenon of pretty recent origin and it's not totally clear whether or not it will hold up.

Comments

This seems to be one of those debates where you need to make a pretty strong distinction between political parties and ideological groups. This post, comparing "conservatives" to "Democrats," strikes me sloppy. Sort like comparing a wingnut to a workshop.

Posted by southpaw | October 19, 2007 9:10 AM

Sort of*

talk about sloppy . . .

Posted by southpaw | October 19, 2007 9:11 AM

The other important difference here is that on both the issue of Social Security and abortion rights, the Dems line is simply the status quo.

With the GOP and the right though, their agenda is not low taxes, but a never-ending cycle of *continuing* to cut taxes. It is as if there is no level of taxes that will ever be acceptable to them.

So along that line, there is really no comparison between the two groups - there is no single policy issue that mobilizes the Dems or the left like cutting taxes.

Posted by McKingford | October 19, 2007 9:38 AM

The question of causation is different in the two situations as well. The only possible "cause" for the Republicans' adherence to the view that tax cuts invariably raise revenues at the current rate structure is idealogical Stalinism. Somebody should ask Drezner what he thinks the cause for the Republican acceptance of this orthodoxy is -- i.e., does he think there's a sound basis for the Republican view that lowering taxes invariably increases revenues, or does he think that view is just demagoguery?

On the social security question, which is the only question on which Democratic orthodoxy is nearly as uniform as the Republican view on taxes, there is at least a persuasive empirical argument that the Social Security retirement system is sound as it is and that, if any changes need to be made, they need not and should not be made now, until the degree of change necessary becomes clear. (There is also, of course, an equally good argument that the changes proposed so far will damage the system -- indeed, that that is their actual purpose.) It is no surprise that Democrats have accepted this view, because it's right; there needn't be any hypothesis of imposed idealogical purity to explain it.

Posted by David in NY | October 19, 2007 9:50 AM

Drezner's comment is just another data point in my 'abolish poli sci' file.

The right's support for the Laffer curve is based on bad economics and lies; the right's opposition to Social Security is based on bad economics and lies. If anything, the Laffer curve and opposition to SS are very similar obsessions on the right; the only reason that abolishing SS is not a mandatory article of faith is that it can be electorally dangerous.

Posted by Barry | October 19, 2007 9:59 AM

While I don't see an imposed ideological standard on any issue for Democrats except for Social Security, there are conventions Democratic presidential candidates usually follow, such as proposing health care plans that, at least incrementally, increase the role of government in the providing of coverage for health care(however, this is the first year, I think, that all major candidates have proposed universal or nearly universal plans).

On abortion, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was able to maintain his chairmanship of the finance committee and his influence in the party after not only voting for the original ban on late-term abortions, but also calling late-term abortion "infanticide" and criticizing feminist groups and party activitists for their absolutism on the issue.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | October 19, 2007 10:05 AM

I also think one needs to understand liberal talking points as expressions which are related, in a dialogic fashion, to how those expressions might be used by the other side. I think if you got a lot of liberals together in private in 1993 (or even, to a certain extent, today), you might find a fair degree of openness to alternative methods of financing social security. But since the advent of the Republican Revolution of '94, and its demonstration of how Movement Conservatism operates, liberals have come to realize that any openness to considering Social Security reform, in the context of Republican power, will only result in privatization and the routing of government funds away from the poor and middle class, and towards the financial industry and the ultra-rich. Liberals consider it suicidal to express any deviation on Social Security in public because the program is menaced by an implacable, devious, and greedy opponent.

I can't see how anything similar could be said about supply-side economics or opposition to abortion.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 19, 2007 10:20 AM

I agree with southpaw - this comparison is innately flawed because its starting from a flawed premise: not all Democrats are liberal. Democrats have a big tent coalition that pulls in a lot of different smaller groups - the party isn't an ideological movement as much as it is a machine to get people elected. In most states you can't be too far right and be in the Democratic Party, but in the south there are still some fairly center-right politicians who haven't changed parties.

Liberals don't even have much say in what goes on in the Democratic Party anymore (if they ever did, really - they certainly haven't since my political awakening back in the mid-80s). The centrists rule the Party for the most part. And centrists are much more concerned with keeping their jobs than enforcing orthodoxy of belief. And that's why the Social Security issue is the "third rail" that you note above - not because the "liberals" would have gotten mad at attempts to change it but because the CENTRISTS knew that attempts to change it would endanger their chances of getting re-elected.

Posted by NonyNony | October 19, 2007 10:27 AM

The Democrats aren't pro-abortion, they're pro-choice, which gives them some room to tolerate those who are personally opposed to abortion. The logic of the other side's position does not allow them as much room to tolerate opposing views.

Posted by rea | October 19, 2007 10:29 AM

Democratic beliefs on SS and abortion are inherently debatable, and it seems right that toeing the line on these things might be the right thing to do if your going to define yourself as a Democratic. I mean, if you don't believe the party line on these things, then what makes you a Democrat? Obviously, there are other things, but you have to believe in a few things in common with your group if you're going to be a member of that group.

On the other hand, believing in the Laffer Curve, or more accurately, always believing we are at that point where cutting taxes raises revenue despite pretty good evidence to the contrary, is an aspect of insanity.

Perhaps the question Kevin Drum ought to be asking is "is there any subject on which liberals must agree in order to continue to be considered liberals that involves believing something that is in clear contradiction with reality?"

Posted by Phil | October 19, 2007 10:40 AM

Drezner ignores the fact - rather germane to the near-universal opposition to Social Security privatization among Democrats - that Social Security privatization is a egregiously stupid idea.

Posted by DCBob | October 19, 2007 10:43 AM

Democrats generally have a soft spot for unions, while Republicans, OTOH, do not. I remember listening once to Newt Gingrich on CSPAN and thinking 'Gee, he doesn't sound so bad...' but the subject of unions came up-- and Newt's face turned beet-red and he proceeded to say some rather astonishing things.

Posted by MattF | October 19, 2007 11:09 AM

There is a certain amount of historical revisionism going on here, much as we see on Iraq. When the Social Security debate broke out in November 2004 and then accelerated in Spring 2005 large parts of the Democratic Party were firmly in the camp that there was a 'Crisis' though perhaps unconvinced that private accounts were a solution. It took a tremendous amount of pushback to get almost anyone to the position that David in NY expressed above. The notion that Social Security might be 'sound as is' was largely dismissed as lunacy on the basis that 'everyone knows...' this that or the other about Social Security.

It is nice that consensus is emerging on Social Security in the Democratic Party, just as we are getting consensus on Iraq, but none of that 'just happened'. In 2004 the Third Rail of American Politics had had almost all of its juice drained out and it took an awful lot of repair work by an initially small band of electricians to get it humming again.

dKos Diary Nov 21, 2004: What if Social Security wasn't broken? (And it isn't)

First comment? "Pull the other leg (none / 0)
and it plays jingle bells." And that was fairly typical. The case against Social Security among people under 40 was almost universal. Now it might have been characterized as 'more in sorrow than in anger' but there it was.

Professor Barkley Rosser of JMU had been systematically quizzing his incoming Economics students on Social Security and had never had one understand that even under Intermediate Cost assumptions that the benefit check at depletion was still on course to be 20% better in real terms than the one an equivalently situated retiree gets today. Not one, ever and these were prospective Econ majors.

Prof Rosser and Dean Baker and Max Sawicky and some others (cough) have been doing some heavy lifting on this right from the beginning, but before summer 2005 it was kind of lonely at the fighting front. For that matter not a single Presidential candidate mounted any real pushback when Russert tried to press this issue at that debate. The work isn't done by a long shot.

Posted by Bruce Webb | October 19, 2007 1:40 PM

My experience working with people in DC is that the pro-choice orthodoxy is rather strictly enforced, and there are a lot of establishment groups and people who insist on only working for or supporting a pro-choice candidate, unlike any other Dem interest group (environment, unions, tax raising, anti-war).

Posted by Tony V | October 19, 2007 2:23 PM

Social security is nothing like the tax cuts increase revenue folks b/c the Right is obviously wrong on the facts and lie about it.

The Dems don't rigidly enforce a party line lie about Social Security. People are also relatively free to debate whether it's really in trouble or whether there is any type of privitization that makes sense.

Dems just aren't a ideologically rigid party like the authoritarian GOP has become.

Posted by bob | October 19, 2007 2:32 PM

Not that Kevin Drum would actually come out and say it, because he seems to be a pretty nice guy, but the tax cuts are only a means to the goal, which is beating down liberals. That's pretty much it as far as conservatism goes. Propose a tax cut, wait for a liberal to go against it because of any one of a number of reasons (having to cut services, fiscal irresponsibility, putting all of the tax cut benefit to the rich, etc. etc), and then cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

For other examples, see:

-the creation of DHS

-Valerie Plame

-the "party of cut and run"

-Iraq, execution of war in

-S-CHIP

-John Kerry, Swift-boating of

-"we do not torture"

-"to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists"

et cetera

Posted by jonathan | October 19, 2007 3:07 PM

brooksfoe nailed it.

Posted by David J. Balan | October 19, 2007 3:09 PM

I agree entirely with Bruce Webb's account of the Social Security battles of 2004-5. And I am grateful to him, Max Sawicky, Barkley Rosser, Dean Baker, et al., for the work they did. It was indeed, not easy, given the common wisdom of the day. But I think it's unfair to charge me with "revisionism" (if that was directed at me) for saying "there [was] at least a persuasive empirical argument that the Social Security retirement system is sound as it is and that, if any changes need to be made, they need not and should not be made now, until the degree of change necessary becomes clear," and for suggesting that this empirical argument, rather than the simple requirements of idealogical purity, explained the Democrats' resistance to watering down Social Security. It is to Bruce and his colleagues' true credit that this argument was made and that Democrats listened to it. (It is also a tribute to the common-sense view of lots of ordinary people that SS didn't seem broke, and George Bush was probably not the guy to fix it, anyway.)

But that really just emphasizes the point I was trying to make. You can't compare the Democrats' views on social security to the Republican's views on the Laffer curve and taxes. The former may be conditioned by an idealogical bent, but it has a sound empirical basis (once Bruce has explained it). The latter has no empirical support to speak of; it is the product of faith alone. There's no comparable "faith based" Democratic issue.

Maybe what Bruce is saying though, is that there's not necessarily so much uniformity among Democrats as we imagine from the outcome of the 2004-05 events, since that outcome was hardly a foregone conclusion, and Democrats are, even on this crucial issue, apt to consider alternatives more readily than the Republicans, who march in idealogical lockstep, right down the Laffer curve. So the answer may be, given the greater diversity (or perhaps credulity) of Democrats, there is no issue to which they adhere in the way the Republicans do to the Tax Gods.

Posted by David in NY | October 19, 2007 4:36 PM