Is the DC media really this confused about public opinion on taxing millionaires?
Ari MelberWe know one thing about President Obama’s new plan to cut the deficit by taxing millionaires more. It’s popular. Really, unusually popular. But not according to the Beltway press.
First, the facts: 81 percent of Americans say millionaires can pay more taxes to cover the deficit. It’s the most popular approach to deficit reduction. (A spending freeze comes in at 68 percent, while voucherizing Medicare only interests about 45 percent of the public.) So even if this thing doesn’t pass, the president forces Republicans to reject their own constituents’ views on a populist economic issue.
If you relied on some of the Washington media’s coverage, however, you’d think the president is out on some leftist crusade right now.
Ben Smith, the influential Politico reporter, covered the tax plan under the headline “Obama Chooses The Left.” The Hill went with “Obama Plays to Base with Tax Plan,” and PBS blared “Obama’s Deficit Plan Rallies His Base.” ’Cause you know that Democratic base goes crazy for deficit plans!
It’s all a little crazy.
Large majorities of voters support taxing millionaires and protecting social security. Yet the DC agenda has been so right for so long, a plan that moves back to the broad, popular center is depicted as a liberal bonanza. But there is no such thing as a “left-wing deficit plan,” just like there is no “right-wing universal healthcare plan.” Right-wingers don’t want universal healthcare (no matter how you get there), and right now, left-wingers don’t want to prioritize deficit reduction. Liberals want government revenues going towards job creation. This is not a deficit crisis, as Nation editor-in-chief Katrina vanden Heuvel has said, it’s “a jobs crisis.”
In fact, the entire deficit obsession reflects a conservative victory. They have set the political agenda. Only in Washington can the pursuit of a conservative agenda, with centrist policies, be depicted as liberal reform.
Video: The Nation’s Ari Melber delivers a version of this piece in a commentary segment on MSNBC:
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Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.