How Republicans talk when nobody else is listening:
Key background information: The public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes. It's crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade off here--that we will boost education spending and set aside Social Security and Medicare surplus to address the future of those programs, and still we will have an enormous surplus. This isn't an "either/or" question.
In short: "We don't think like the American people do, we don't value what they value. Thus we have to move quietly and carefully--to reassure them, to tell them probable lies, and so keep them from realizing that our priorities may well turn out to be in sharp conflict with theirs."
Could Treasury Press Secretary Michele Davis have believed what she was writing--that there was no conflict, that even after everyone's priorities were met there would still be "an enormous surplus"? It's likely. Press secretaries are very good at persuading themselves that what would be convenient to say is actually true. Could Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill have believed what he was reading. Nah. I remember writing memos for the Bradley campaign in early 2000 talking about how (a) the surplus wasn't really that big, and (b) was vulnerable to surprisingly small shifts in economic assumptions. As prominent a deficit hawk as O'Neill was had to have been well aware of the shaky status of the surplus projections. And he was. That is, after all, why O'Neill wanted "triggers" in the tax bill that would make protecting the surplus more important than keeping the tax cuts.
Here is the document:
Posted by DeLong at February 5, 2004 09:12 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postMEMO
To: Secretary O'Neill
From: Michele
Date: Tuesday 2/27/01
Re: Tomorrow's Press Conference Unveiling the BudgetYou and Mitch Daniels are scheduled to unveil the President's budget at a press conference in the OEOB at 10:15 tomorrow morning. This event, more than anything you've participated in to date, requires that you be monotonously on-message. In addition to the media attending, this event is simulcast to the White House press corp that is traveling with the President in Pennsylvania.
Daniels will speak first, and he will present the overall themes of controlling the growth in spending and paying off all the debt available for retirement. He will leave most of the tax cut discussion to you.
Your role is 1) to repeat the message that we will pay off all the debt available to pay off and 2) state clearly that we must cut taxes because we take more from people than we need to fund these new priorities, and if we don't give it back to the people who paid it, we'll end up wasting it in Washington.
Key background information: The public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes. It's crucial that your remarks make clear that there is no trade off here--that we will boost education spending and set aside Social Security and Medicare surplus to address the future of those programs, and still we will have an enormous surplus. This isn't an "either/or" question.
Roll-out events like this are the clearest examples of when staying on message is absolutely crucial. Any deviation during the unveiling of the budget will change the way the coverage plays out from tomorrow forward. For example, you do not want to discuss potential Social Security reform ideas. Your remarks should be very focussed and your answers during the Q and A should only repeat your remarks.
- We have funded America's priorities of education and national defense.
- We have walled off Social Security and Medicare funds where they can only be used to modernize those programs.
- We will pay off all the debt available to be retired.
- That still leaves an enormous surplus. We need structural tax reform, because the tax system is taking more from working people than Washington needs to pay for America's priorities.
- If we don't let taxpayers keep more of what they earn, those tax surpluses will be spent expanding government beyond our needs. Spending grew 8% last year--that's a recipe for waste.
- We all know government is full of duplication--there are places we need to consolidate programs and spend the taxpayers' money more wisely. But we won't do that as long as we are awash in tax surpluses.
- Today's federal tax burden is higher than it's been at any time in our nation's history. It's time to give tax relief to taxpayers, and lay the groundwork for a consumer-led expansion in the economy.
- It's time to cut income taxes, so people keep more of what they earn, and decide for themselves how best to spend it.
was 7 true?
Posted by: praktike on February 5, 2004 10:36 PMYes, but only because people were selling stocks at bubble-boosted prices and paying capital gains taxes at a ferocious rate. It was already stopping being true when O'Neill said it.
Posted by: Brad DeLong on February 5, 2004 10:56 PMPoint 2 is a little strange:
"We have walled off Social Security and Medicare funds where they can only be used to modernize those programs."
What does "modernize" mean? Why didn't it say "used to keep the programs solvent for those who will become retirees in the short to medium term to whom we have a moral obligation to fulfill our statutory obligations to the best of our ability, even though we hate the programs as currently conceived and would like to end them as soon as possible"?
Totally creepy memo. Weasel words within weasel words.
Michele's job, I take it, is to be sure that O'Neill spouts the approved propaganda.
How is this different than anything the Soviets did? No one may say anything but the approved party line?
More evidence for my long-standing assertion that if the Republicans ever actually said what they planned to do, they could not win an election for anything bigger than dogcatcher in Point Barrow, Alaska.
Posted by: Chuck Nolan on February 6, 2004 05:12 AMBut do dogs need catching in Barrow Point?
Posted by: john c. halasz on February 6, 2004 06:34 AMI need to respond to the distracting question 'could Michele actually believe ...? It's likely.'
This insulating layer needs a thorough cleaning in my view. ( No warnings on Liquid Plumber that says I can't use it here.)
Maybe I've got it wrong. That this is exactly what that layer does and that if it weren't there any Secretary Treasurer (but esp O'Neill) would run 'off-message'. (Recalling the recently blogged Nixon tapes, I note the absence of intermediaries like Michele.)
Was the Professor's stint at the WH similarly aided by such coaching? ("And if we hear anything more about any 13yr olds..."). Does Snow get the same treatment? Are their any candidates ( a list appeared on another thread here) who would like the job of following Michele's directives?
But back 'on-message': Does she actually believe? I think she doesn't wrestle with it. She does her job. But the guy writing her script?... pass the Liquid Plumber Industrial Strength.
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We don't think like the American people do, we don't value what they value. Thus we have to move quietly and carefully--to reassure them, to tell them probable lies, and so keep them from realizing that our priorities may well turn out to be in sharp conflict with theirs.
------
I would say that this take is heavily backed up by their fondness for proposing Constitutional Amendments. Or the mess made of the Califonia fiscal situation with the Proposition-of-the-Day.
Get people to feel a certain way, using Gingrich/Luntz techniques, and then when the party buzz is replaced by the clarity of a cold morning hangover, well, too bad. The only democracy you get to participate in is "American Idol"-- the rest of what goes on is legally off-limits to the rest of the people.
Posted by: a different chris on February 6, 2004 09:12 AMdifferent chris:
"The only democracy you get to participate in is "American Idol"-- the rest of what goes on is legally off-limits to the rest of the people."
Well, isn't that what good Straussians believe?
Posted by: Kosh on February 6, 2004 11:57 AMRe calmo's and other comments:
The problem is that the US admin is practicing bad marketing that is not innovative enough. They should get some one to dress up in an Alexander Hamilton or an Albert Gallatin suite to read this stuff. I guess there are later Treasury Sectretaries who would do just as well, but the later Secretaries' clothes and hairdoo wouldn't have that Enlightment Founder's authoritative touch, which is what we are talking about here.
In this chair once sat.... AND HE SITS AGAIN! And agrees with everything the boss men ever said -whether it's a typo or careless mistake or tacky V. short term policy ploy, whatever!
Anyway, that might be the next phase, and if so, you heard it here first.
#7 is really a bit misleading. It is only the individual income taxes that were higher as a percentage of GDP. But if you have more wealthy people making more money, that is going to happen. Almost all the other Federal taxes were not at record highs (% of GDP) in 2000, SS, corporate income tax, and estate taxes have all been as high or higher than in 2000. Of course under Bush SS taxes went up and personal income taxes, corporate income taxes and estate taxes have dropped as % of GDP. The $60 billion increase in SS receipts does not match the loss of $75 billion in corporate income tax, a 37% drop.
Posted by: bakho on February 6, 2004 07:11 PMTe capiam, cunicule sceleste! - I'll get you, you wascally wabbit!
Cotidiana vilescunt - Familiarity breeds contempt
Intellectum valde amat - Love the intellect strongly. (St. Augustine)