Tax tunes

Mark Mellman, one of the nation’s leading Democratic pollsters and a columnist for this newspaper, wrote recently about voters’ dwindling fear of the taxman.

He noted that Gallup found in a poll last month that 53 percent of those surveyed said the amount they paid in federal taxes was too high. This is still a majority but represents a substantial decline since 1993, when 67 percent told the Harris polling company they “had reached the breaking point” on the amount of taxes they paid.

Nevertheless, as Mellman also pointed out, no one wants to pay more taxes. So it was either brave or foolhardy of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) to say last weekend that in addition to rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts he would also, as president, consider raising taxes on those earning more than $200,000.

Speaking to California Democrats, Edwards said that “there are some judgments the next president is going to have to make” about taxes and that this might make new taxes “worthy of consideration.”

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a long-shot for the Democratic presidential nomination, swiftly distanced himself from Edwards, saying of his rivals, “Democrats, whenever we have a solution, we want to tax … I’m different, I’m a tax cutter.”
So: One candidate (Richardson) says most Democrats want to raise taxes, but he is different and would cut them. Another (Edwards) says raising taxes may be necessary in order to upgrade social programs; his healthcare proposals would cost up to $120 billion a year.

(It is noteworthy that while Edwards is sticking to the $200,000 figure that he and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) used in their 2004 bid for the White House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has kept the door open on increasing taxes for those who make $500,000 or more.)

Richardson’s response makes clear that he is betting taxes retain their potency as an election issue and that he wants to lump his rivals together as tax raisers while carving out a niche for himself as a tax cutter. Edwards, for his part, is entrenching the idea that he is the candidate who has the substantive proposals and who is unafraid to suggest their fiscal consequences.

We’d bet that the remainder of the Democratic hopefuls wish the two of them would zip it. Even if fewer voters than a generation ago regard taxes as too high, Gallup’s 53 percent is still a big number, and certainly includes more people than earn $200,000. Polls have shown Americans to be aspirational about taxes; even if they don’t fall into the category about to get hit, they hope one day to be in that upper bracket and don’t like the idea that the IRS will be waiting for them with outstretched hand when they get there.

If taxes are losing potency, tax cutters cannot risk running a one-note candidacy on the issue. On the other hand, that one note is still music to a lot of ears.