Harold Myerson: The Greatest Good for the Smallest Number

The Greatest Good for the Smallest Number: The Republican Congress doesn’t like to legislate, and it shows
By HAROLD MEYERSON
LA Weekly

If the Republican Congress has a guiding principle, it must be that the government that governs least governs worst.

By now, the modus operandi of this Congress is clearly established: First, ignore a national problem, either because doing something about it would annoy your betters (be they the president or the guys who write your campaign checks) or because your ideology, which states that government should do nothing except help the rich get richer, blocks you from doing anything except helping the rich get richer. Thus, the Congress has performed no oversight or conducted any investigations of a government project that’s gone bad (the war) and another that didn’t go at all (the rescue of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina). Thus, the Congress has done nothing about medical costs and the rising number of Americans with no insurance.

But there come times — usually just before elections — when public demand and fear of electoral wipeout force the Congress to act. Which brings us to the Congress’ modus vivendi: Address public needs just enough to survive elections, but in a way that still benefits your betters. That explains the Republicans’ prescription-drug program, Medicare Part D, which picks up some of the costs of seniors’ medications. A major factor in keeping drug prices high is Medicare Part D itself, which forbids the government from negotiating lower prices from the pharmaceutical companies, which are, of course, a mainstay of Republican campaign finance.

And it explains the latest masterpiece from the Republican House — the bill, passed at 1:30 a.m. last Saturday, that raises the minimum wage, and also makes cuts in the estate tax so large as to guarantee the defunding of half the government should this bill ever make it through the Senate. On the wage side of the equation, the bill would raise the federal minimum from $5.15 an hour — the subbasement level at which it’s languished since 1997; the lowest level in terms of purchasing power that the minimum wage has been at in the past 50 years — to $7.25, a raise that would be phased in over the next three years. On the estate-tax side, the measure would schedule reductions to go in place by 2011 that would decrease the tax from 55 percent on the largest estates to the rate of capital-gains taxes (currently 15 percent) for estates worth between $10 million and $25 million, and to 30 percent for estates larger than $25 million.

According to the calculations of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, the number of workers who would benefit directly from the wage hike — that is, whose hourly wage is under $7.25 — is 6.6 million. The number of estates that would benefit from the reduction in taxes in the year it would take effect (2011) is 8,200. The workers, on average, would gain about $1,200 a year. The beneficiaries of the estate-tax reduction would gain, on average, $1.4 million. For what the Tax Policy Center estimates to be the richest eligible estates, the 900 worth more than $20 million in that year, the gain, on average, would be $5.6 million.

Who still believes in John Stuart Mill? The goal of House Republicans, apparently, is the greatest good for the smallest number.

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