Clinton had campaigned on a pledge to raise taxes on high incomes, arguing that the affluent had disproportionately benefited from the prosperity of the ‘80s and that the middle class had been left behind. As president, he followed through, pushing for the creation of new 36 and 39.6 tax brackets for high-income earners. He got his way, but without a single Republican vote. The 1993 budget passed the House by the barest margin – 218-216 – and made it through the Senate on the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Al Gore. Republicans guaranteed that it would ruin the fragile recovery, plunge the country into a new recession, cost millions of jobs, and fail to reduce the deficit. Because of the experience of 1990, even normally pragmatic members of the party had no wiggle room; anti-tax absolutism had become orthodoxy.
Of course, none of the dire predictions about Clinton’s budget panned out. As it happened, the rest of the decade was marked by declining unemployment and strong growth. And, thanks to the combined effects of Clinton and Bush tax hikes, this translated into a revenue windfall, resulting in budget surpluses in the final years of Clinton’s second term. (Source)
Remind your Republican friends about this when they start talking about the negative impact of taxes on the economy. And when they counter with the strained argument that it was the Republican Congress after the Republican Revolution in '94 that is really responsible for balancing the budget and creating a surplus, remind them what a Republican congress and president did after 2000: they started two unnecessary wars and cut taxes at the same time; they rammed Medicare Part D down congress's throat without any pretense that it need to be paid for, and don't forget to tell them that Paul Ryan voted for it too. And remind them of Dick Cheney's famous dictum in 2002: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter."
Maybe there was a day when Republicans deserved to be described as fiscal conservatives, but the Republican Party that exists now does not deserve that reputation even to the least degree. They do not care about squandering the taxpayers' money nor do they care about the fiscal health of the country.They only care about protecting the interests of their cronies and keeping them well fed. They are the party of the wealthy entrenched interests; they are playing a class-warfare game and using any cover story they can to disguise it. Supply side, trickle down, Laffer curves, whatever.
Wealthy elites from time immemorial fear the mob, and in democracies they fear that it's just a matter of time before the majority legislates to confiscate everything they own. This fear is at the heart of Republican thinking at this time. These elites may not have numbers, but they have money, and they use it to coopt weak opponents and destroy those who won't be coopted, and they use it to promote propaganda campaigns that divide and conquer the mob. They believe that their survival requires it. To give in on a small thing now is to take one's finger out of the dike.
It's not a small, trickle they fear, but the flood they are certain will inevitably sweep them away. This is a fear-driven policy stance that has nothing in mind except self-protection, and the powerful, when they are ruled by fear, they rule by fear. For a fearful elite repression is the only technique to insure its survival. It doesn't have to be this way; but policies motivated by fear too often become self-fullfilling prophecies. Compromise dissipates the buidling pressure for radical change, but once things reach a boil there's no dissipating it. Fearful elites assume that things are always at a boil and that if they show any weakness, the flood will come. So they force things to a boil, and then the flood does indeed come.
I am hopeful that it won't come to that in this country because I think Americans are wising up and won't let it happen. But it's important that we understand the game as it is being played here. It's an old game played by fearful elites, and it's not that hard to play, and yet in this information age you'd think people would be wise to it. And the national Republican leadership are the ones who are playing it right now.
There is zero that is sincere in anything that Republicans say, but about half the people want to believe it because it is so uncomfortable for them not to. It's important for them to believe that there is a legitimate party that represents their values. It's a con. And all con artists know that the easiest mark is the one who at some level wants something badly enough to divert them from paying too much attention to the details, to the fishy smell, to the look in the eye that isn't quite right.
It is hard for me to explain otherwise how any intelligent person with even the flimsiest historical memory can take anything the Republicans say at face value. Sure, the Democrats are feckless and corrupt--that's politics, but they are not so blatantly irresponsible when it comes to the welfare of the country as a whole.
As with Clinton, I am opposed to Obama's neoliberal policies. But he's a pragmatist whose center-right policy positions deserve to be part of a sane conversation about how to solve real problems we all face as a nation. I think he does care about solving the problems of the nation, even if I disagree with his basic approach. I do not believe that of anybody in Republican leadership. I do not think they well-intentioned but mistaken. I do not think that they care about the nation as a whole. I think they care about only one thing--protecting the interests of a very small group of entrenched wealthy elites, and I think that their fear-saturated, survival mentality justifies for them any means to achieve their ends.