Few spectacles in politics are as fascinating or captivating as watching hacks and ideologues set about the delicate work of fashioning an argument that – in the normal course of things – should be impossible to make. In other words, an argument so improbable or nonsensical that it could only be meant for political consumption.
It’s almost like watching insects create some improbable structure on the Nature channel.
Anyway, for years now Republicans have been a little wary of going back to their circa 1993 argument that Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase would kill jobs, throw the economy into recession, and perhaps even destroy the planet.
For a while in the mid-90s they argued that the economy would be growing even faster if taxes hadn’t been raised. But when the economy started screeching out growth at a rate most economists consider too high – say 5% or so – even that argument started to seem a little shaky.
Now they’re taking another crack at it. And, no, don’t snicker! Because arguing that the fiscal policy which preceded the most sustained economic expansion in American history was in fact a job killer is no mean feat.
Anyway, the new emerging Republican argument (which you could hear mouthed on CNN’s Late Edition last Sunday by Jim Miller and Wayne Angell) goes like this: the Clinton tax increase was a terrible drag on the economy, just as Republicans said it would be. But it coincided with a technology-driven explosion in productivity. And this productivity bonanza masked the awful effects of the tax increase.
Miller put it thus:
And the last decade, because of the information technology revolution raising productivity, it masked a lot of bad decisions, including to increase tax rates. That’s sort of coming to an end and now the fiscal drag really is holding us back, and we need to reduce that.
So basically the predicted bad effects of the Clinton tax increase didn’t fail to appear as Republicans predicted they would in 1994 and 1995. They were just delayed half a dozen years. That is, until now!
I predict we’ll be hearing a lot more of this argument because it fulfills the basic requirements of the best bogus political argumentation. Though almost ridiculously improbable and quite nearly demonstrably false, the argument has enough logical structure to be at least theoretically possible. And that makes it more than serviceable for the normal run of fanatical ideologues, confirmed partisans and weak-minded bumpkins to make use of endlessly.
Trust me, we’ll be hearing a lot of this.
