Every policy has a starting point and this beginning is the “perceived” state of affairs that we are to believe is less desirable than the policies stated objective.   But if the starting point makes inaccurate assumptions or posits conclusions that are untenable, the policy is less than worthless.  Carol Shea-Porter’s policy page is littered with misconceptions, so I will try to deconstruct them over the coming days and weeks.

From Sheaporter.org

THE ECONOMY  Some people in America are thriving. George Bush and the Republican leaders have consistently voted for the very wealthy, the top 1%, and against the rest of us. The loss of this vital tax money (an estimated 48% of the deficit is caused by the Bush tax cuts), coupled with an incredibly expensive war, have left the middle class struggling with the burdens of taxes, high gas prices, medical costs, soaring housing prices, and reductions in services

My Response

If we ignore the populist pandering–which much of this is–and boil this down to the particulars, Carol basically says that the top 1% benefit from tax cuts to the detriment of the other 99%, that this is limiting the governments ability to accumulate tax revenue (which is increasing the deficit) and coupled with an “expensive war” is hurting the middle class by making things more expensive.  My Point by point on the jump.

Point 1) Tax cuts favor the Rich. 

This is a misnomer because the rich already pay most of the taxes collected by the government. The top 1% pays over half of all collected taxes while the top 25% (everyone above the middle class) pays 75-85%.  Almost any effort to reduce taxes will by default favor people who actually pay most of the taxes.  So Carol can’t go wrong when she says it, but she is misleading you intentionally for political benefit. She is also ignoring basic facts about how a successful economy actually works.  The people who pay most of the taxes are also the ones who invest in the opportunities that create the jobs and income growth the middle class needs to survive.  That money does not come from anywhere else, nor should it.  So if we let Carol take more of that investment capital away-(while trying to turn the government into the People’s Republic of Employment)  it will simply reduce real opportunities—stealing jobs and wage growth from the people her “policy” claims need help; the middle class.

Point 2) Carol seems to think that by allowing the people who earned the money to keep it, that the government lost tax revenue and this increased the deficit.  

Her claim here is that because she didn’t steal $20 dollars from you, she now has a $40 debt.  Only an arrogant elitist mentality imagines that the federal government has a moral obligation to forcefully extract taxes from our wages but since Carol has a long record of voting for things that grow government, and require more taxes to pay for it, we can easily make an “if the shoe fits” rebuttle.  We have a deficit because of spending, but Carol wants’ to blame it on anything but.  The fact that Letting the people keep their own money has consistently raised tax revenue for the government, is clearly lost on her.

Point 3) Carol implies that everything is more expensive because of Bush’s war.

The real facts are damaging to Carol’s premise and I hardly have space or time to cover them all here.  Just Ignore all the fiscal wailing because the war’s in Iraq and Afghanistan—including all other defense spending–represent only 4% of our National GDP, while the ever expanding federal welfare state that Democrats want to expand further, already account for at over 20% of GDP.   Yet Carol has the nerve to say the war was incredibly expensive?  Achieving parity on this one point alone would reduce the swelling federal budget by 16% of GDP.  Cutting war funding on the other hand–which she claims is to blame for our “deficit”–would have allowed Al-Qaeda to take over not one, but two Muslim nations, secure a nearly endless supply of cash from oil wealth for further global terrorist actions, give them leverage on the supply side cost structure on a core part of the global energy market, and permit them to further expand their radical conquest of the Middle East.   We can pretend that wouldn’t happen, but the democrats tried repeatedly to surrender Iraq in the midst of Al Qaeda’s effort to foment a civil war so we know it to  be true.  For less than one-third the cost of welfare we have probably saved a nation, and perhaps the entire region.

As to some of the other “burdens” she lists, Carol–home prices are falling not rising; if taxes really are a burden I’d suggest you look in a mirror–or check your voting record–before trying to blame someone else for that; high gas prices will continue to be a problem as long as Carol and the Democrats insist that the laws of supply and demand  work on every other product, service, and commodity known to mankind except oil; and Health care is a matter requiring a whole different post to deconstruct this lie.

In Conclusion

We can see that Carol’s economic policy requires us to believe things that are misleading or simply untrue.   Rep Shea-Porter ignores spending to blame lower taxes.  She avoids the fact that federal mandates, tariffs, price supports, and government restrictions limit choice, competition, and availability, are what makes food, fuel, and services more expensive; that these forced mechanisms raise costs and prices turning even well-meaning government policy into a national consumption tax on the incomes of the middle class.  

Carol would abrogate her complicity in our current situation but the simple fact is that Congress and the House have complete fiscal control over spending legislation and what they do or do not do has a directimpact the economy. 

So how has she done so far?  In 2006 when Carol went to Washington, unemployment was at a 4.5%, a 40 year low. Gasoline was only about $2/gallon, and the DOW was hitting 14,000 for the first time in American History.  After 2 years of Carol, unemployment is up over 5.5%, gas is around $4/ gallon, and the Dow is struggling to stay over 12,000.  If we are to give credit where it is due, Carol is as much or more to blame for where we are as anyone, and we can see that nothing she has to say today about her plans for our economic future will improve that.