Anyone Seen an Economic Policy?

Which brings us to our little friends the Democrats. The fact is, straight through the debacle of the November election, the Democrats had no clear ideas on the economy, either. They campaigned while paralyzed with fear at the prospect of opposing the president on anything — his still-unjustified war, his meshuggeneh tax cut.

One of the few silver linings on the cloud descending on us all is that the Democrats lost so badly, they're finally beginning to regain their voice on the economy. That voice, it's important to note, has been lost for quite some time. During Bill Clinton's presidency, the Democrats became the party of the balanced budget, the better to fend off GOP demands that the growing surplus be turned into tax cuts. This strategic maneuver then became holy writ, however. Unless the Democrats stood for balanced budgets, they could never win elections, argued the Democratic Leadership Council and its green-eyeshade acolytes. During the 2000 primaries, I wince while remembering, Al Gore actually argued that the proper response to an economic downturn was to cut government spending. The ghost of Calvin Coolidge was guiding Democratic policy, and nothing good came from that. It certainly didn't change the public's perception of the parties. In polling earlier this year, with Bush having turned a megasurplus to a monumental deficit while the Democrats manfully called for fiscal discipline, the public made clear that they thought the party of fiscal discipline was — the Republicans. And that balanced budgets didn't matter much to them in any event.

Now, haltingly, unevenly, the Democrats, the ever-malleable Al Gore at the forefront, are calling for a stimulus, too. Many, picking up on an idea first floated by Robert Reich in The American Prospect, are calling for a reduction in payroll taxes, which are paid by workers and employers for Social Security and Medicare, and which is the tax that takes the biggest bite out of the income of working-class families. Others are calling for a federal bailout of the states, most of which face draconian cuts in spending on schools and health care. And some — not all, unfortunately — are calling for rolling back the tax cuts on the rich that aren't scheduled to take effect until decade's end.

With a little leadership, the Democrats could actually structure a fight in which they're calling for a cut on taxes that affect the bottom 80 percent of Americans while the Republicans are defending a cut on the top 5 percent. On taxes, in fact, the Republicans just may be sitting ducks. Of course, that doesn't mean the Democrats remember how to hunt.