Biden and taxes: He’s no Jack Kennedy, but many Democrats are fine with that

These are tough times for Camelot. The Kennedy dynasty’s patriarch, Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, used to exhort his clan to victory in whatever endeavor they undertook, from sailing regattas to presidential races. And they usually fulfilled his wish. In Massachusetts, his sons Jack and Ted, grandson Joe II, and great-grandson Joe III racked up a total of 26 Democratic primary victories. Until this past week, only Sen. Robert Kennedy of New York had lost a Bay State primary — the 1968 presidential contest — to Wisconsin Sen. Gene McCarthy. 

Bobby’s grandson, Congressman Joe Kennedy III, let an early lead in the polls slip away in the 2020 Massachusetts Democratic Senate primary, losing to incumbent Sen. Ed Markey. This most recent ding on the Camelot legacy included a stunning Markey campaign ad in which he turned JFK’s most famous line on its head. “We asked what we could do for our country. We went out; we did it,” the 74-year-old Markey observed. “With all due respect, it’s time to start asking what your country can do for you.” 

That pointed historic reference, so meaningful amid the devastation caused by COVID-19, helped Markey capture the youth vote among Massachusetts Democrats. The critical endorsement of Markey’s reelection bid by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the party’s meteoric star known as AOC, undoubtedly contributed to his 11-point victory over Kennedy.  

The Democrats’ progressive wing, headlined by AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), urges higher taxes to effectuate income equality and fund the Green New Deal, Medicare expansion, Social Security viability, educational opportunities, police reform, and community development. Though more moderate, Joe Biden would hardly perpetuate tax cuts for wealthy Americans and corporations, as the Reagan, Bush 43, and Trump presidencies implemented. But should the former vice president win in November, he would face the opposite kind of pressure that pushed President Kennedy to propose tax cuts in 1963. Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative interest group that advocates lower taxes, just released a video illustrating the Biden-Kennedy divergence on fiscal policy, but the group neglected to include the Democratic Party’s evolution, and intervening Republican policies, that account for the difference.

Biden’s plan calls for restoring the top income tax rate from 37 to 39.6 percent; upping the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent; treating capital gains as ordinary income to increase tax revenue; reintroducing limits on itemized deductions; and applying the Social Security payroll tax to wages over $400,000. In contrast, JFK proposed lowering income tax rates from a 20-91 percent range to 14-65 percent and decreasing corporate rates from 52 percent to 47. What a difference more than a half-century of anti-tax sentiment has made in rates on individuals and corporations. 

Remember when former Vice President Walter Mondale announced in a fit of frankness during a 1984 debate with President Reagan that he would raise taxes? Perhaps you don’t remember Mr. Mondale because he lost in a landslide to the Great Communicator, who had launched his presidency in the midst of a recession by announcing in his 1981 inaugural address that “in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” 

As the JFK Presidential Library notes, Kennedy entered the Oval Office with a recessionary headwind — one that started in 1958 during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency. Unemployment hovered near 7 percent in 1961, and JFK’s Council of Economic advisers urged him to attack the problem with government spending programs modeled on FDR’s New Deal. But Kennedy had only just defeated Vice President Richard Nixon by a razor-thin popular vote margin of 0.1 percent. Worried that conservative Barry Goldwater would be his 1964 Republican reelection opponent, Kennedy was reluctant to add new spending to the $7 billion deficit — over $60 billion in 2020 dollars, but a far cry from the current $1.1 trillion deficit. 

At a massive 1962 Madison Square Garden rally for senior citizens, JFK made the case for government medical insurance for the aged, but the American Medical Association declared it a “socialist” scheme. Kennedy reminded them that they had similarly labeled Social Security when Franklin Roosevelt proposed the program a quarter-century earlier. Now even conservatives accepted it. Yet JFK’s health plan for the elderly floundered in Congress. 

Unlike the pressure Joe Biden feels today from his party’s left flank, Kennedy had to placate conservative southern Democrats. When they made common cause with like-minded Republicans to cut spending, New Frontier social programs were doomed. As his reelection campaign loomed, Kennedy made a bold move in 1963 and proposed tax cuts. The budget hawks in both parties wanted more, however, calling for reduced expenditures to meet the projected revenue loss. Sixty percent of Americans supported JFK’s plan, but it remained stymied in Congress when he headed to Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

Another Massachusetts native, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, wrote that “taxes are what we pay for civilized society.” Yet, even if we could all agree on the type of society we desire (unlikely as culture wars rage), liberals tend to believe that government can create that civilization, while conservatives rely on the private sector to do so. And rarely shall the twain meet on what we all must “render unto Caesar.”

Barbara A. Perry (@BarbaraPerryUVA) is Presidential Studies director and Gerald L. Baliles Professor at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.