Underreported in the Debt- Ceiling Debates: A Major Shift in Public Attitudes?

The debate over closing tax loopholes and ending tax breaks for wealthy families and corporations has become a hot issue this summer, but it’s one with a long history.

And from where I stand as a longtime advocate for children and low-income families, some of biggest news is what we’re not hearing much about: a potentially major shift in public attitudes toward tax policy.

When I first came to DC as a citizen activist from Michigan, I was full of energy and optimism. I made my first round of visits to Capitol Hill, trying to get more funding for children’s services by preparing for the inevitable question: where are you going to get the money?

Easy! I planned to point out a big tax loophole worth billions of dollars for the largest insurance companies. Close that loophole and you can afford more funding for WIC and other important programs for kids.

I got resistance from both Republicans and Democrats. Staffers in a leading Democrat’s office asked me point-blank if I was getting paid by small insurance companies to fight the big guys. The staffer in a conservative Republican’s office said, with a straight face, that the American public was wholeheartedly anti-tax and wouldn’t want Congress to close a loophole, even if it was only available to billionaires.

This was 1994. Welcome to DC politics.

Fast forward to 2001. This time I was trying to work smarter, getting advice from savvy communications experts about how to argue against proposed tax cuts that would cost the Treasury billions and would benefit only the richest Americans, giving very little back to ordinary families.

I attended numerous meetings where Bob Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, www.cbpp.org outlined the gaping hole that these tax cuts would create in the federal budget over the coming decade, inevitably squeezing out funding for programs that helped low-income and middle-class families at a time when wages were stagnant and costs for everything from housing to college were rising.

When my colleagues and I tried to rally public support to oppose the new tax cuts, the savvy pollsters told us it was a fool’s mission. The public supported the tax cuts—even if they weren’t going to benefit from them and even if it meant more federal debt.

Why? In part because then, as now, public distrust of government was running high. The idea that government couldn’t do anything right resonated with Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform campaign to “starve the beast." That’s how strong anti-government sentiment was, communications experts Ethel Klein and Douglas Gould told me.

Pollster Celinda Lake told me that her work indicated the public wouldn’t oppose the tax breaks because middle-class families rarely saw themselves as likely to need government assistance. Instead, they aspired to be wealthy enough to get those high-level tax breaks for themselves. (And in fact, most Americans weren’t aware of the many ways they already benefited from government programs—from child care tax credits to mortgage write-offs).

The first wave of the so-called “Bush Tax Cuts” was enacted in record time in 2001, riding in on the supply-side argument that giving more to the wealthy would boost job growth.

A decade later, some economists tell us that the cost of these tax cuts (along with two wars) has driven our federal budget from surplus to deficit and in fact helped slow job growth.  The primary legacy of these tax cuts, these economists say, is more concentrated wealth at the top of the pyramid while middle-class families have lost ground.

Yet in the current debate, I continue to hear the “trickle down” arguments—that raising taxes or removing tax breaks will punish “job-creators” (but it seems to me, they’re really talking about Wall Street CEOs, rather than business owners).

Recent public opinion polls lead me to ask, this anti-tax tide finally turning?

The cost of tax loopholes and tax breaks is no longer abstract for most people. As Congress proposes cuts to every program and service in our communities and neighborhoods—from education to police and fire departments—the choice is much more tangible.

Call me a cock-eyed optimist, but after almost 20 years I am beginning to believe the pendulum is swinging from the extremes of anti-tax fever to a more balanced middle, where with the right level of funding, government is seen as a partner in restoring our economic strength, the health and well-being of our families, and our place in the world.

All we need now is for Congress to listen.