rich get more in tax breaks then the poor get from welfare

8/6/2019 Rich Get More in Tax Breaks Then the Poor Get From Welfare

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Ennor, CreativeCommons

Rich get more in Tax Breaksthan the Poor get from Welfare


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Heres an article I think everyone should read.

Rich get more in Tax Breaks than the Poor get from Welfare

by Sherwood RossAugust 8, 2011Global Researchhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25933

All the Federal welfare checks, food stamps, and unemployment benefitsdont begin to add up to the more than $1-trillion in indirect tax breaks awardedannually to Americas middle- and upper-classes.

Whereas social benefits such as welfare are paid in the form of checks, taxbreaks function by allowing recipients themselves simply to keep more money,

reducing the amount they would otherwise owe, observes Suzanne Mettler inthe current issue of The Washington Monthly (see full article below).

As a matter of budgeting, however, there is no difference between a tax breakand a social program: both have to be paid for, either by raising tax rates or byadding to the deficit, Mettler points out.

In short, In the case of social tax expendituresthe most expensive of thesesubsidies shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans, writesMettler, a professor of government at Cornell University and author of TheSubmerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American

Democracy, coming this fall from University of Chicago Press.

Her message: Beneath the surface of American government lurks a system ofsocial programs for the wealthy that is consuming the federal budget.

For example, in 2004, 69 percent of the benefits of Americas home mortgageinterest deduction were claimed by households with incomes of $100,000 orabove---the top 15 percent of the income distribution, Mettler demonstrates.

That same group also reaped 55 percent of the benefits emanating from the tax-free status retirement benefits and 30 percent of those from employer-provided

health benefits. This is because most tax expenditures reward activities thatpeople with greater resources are better poised to take part in: buying moreexpensive homes and qualifying for mortgages far bigger than those of thetypical home buyer; or obtaining generous employer-provided benefits, whosepreviously broad coverage has declined sharply, particularly among those withlow to moderate incomes.
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And while the number of welfare recipients has shrunk since the 1996 reforms,

(meaning many of the poorest of the poor have been lopped off the rolls,) thenumber of the affluent cashing in on tax breaks has soared. Over the past fewdecades, while many standard social benefits have atrophied in real value, thosepackaged as tax expenditureshave flourished, growing rapidly in value andnumber, Mettler asserts.

These tax expenditures for individuals and families represented 7.4 percent ofGDP in 2008, up from 4.2 percent in 1976. By way of comparison, SocialSecurity amounted to 4.3 percent of GDP in 2008; Medicare and Medicaid, 4.1percent, she added.

Most Americans, Mettler says, express disdain for government social spendingeven when they benefit from it. Without discussion of what is actually at stake inspending through the tax code, citizens are not told what these subsidies reallyare: special provisions for particular groups of people, especially the wealthyMettler goes on to write, Tax expenditures also exacerbate economic inequalityby dramatically reducing the revenues government collects, leaving considerablyfewer resources available for the programs like Head Start and Pell grants thatbenefit lower-income Americans.

The vested interests that profit from the tax break policies, ranging from the realestate and health care industries to the nonprofit foundation world, Mettler says,are keenly aware of them and invest heavily in their political capacity to preserveand defend core policies. Real estate sector giving to political campaigns

jumped from $43 million in 1992 to $138 million in 2008.

Ordinary Americans, by contrast, have little awareness of the very existence ofsuch policies, even if they are beneficiaries themselves, Mettler says. Its timefor progressives to do battle with tax expenditures. #

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based reporter who formerly worked for majordailies and wire services. Reach him [email protected] Ross is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research

Articles by Sherwood Ross
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Features

July/August 2011 20,000 Leagues Under the State

Beneath the surface of American government lurks a system of social programs for thewealthy that is consuming the federal budget. Its time for progressives to do battle withtax expenditures.

By Suzanne Mettler

Photo: Mark Thomas

Growing up during the Depression, Sam Marchesi had to drop out of school after eighthgradesoon after his father diedto work and help support his mother and his sevenyounger siblings. When World War II began, he enlisted in the Army and served in thePacific. Upon his return, he took advantage of the educational and training benefits of the

G.I. Bill, joining the 52 percent of fifteen million returning veterans who did so. Heacquired vocational training in architectural drawing and on-the-job training as anapprentice carpenter, skills that enabled him to become a successful custom builder.When I interviewed Marchesi in the late 1990s for a study of the G.I. Bill, he reflected, Ithink it was a great thing that the government did, to give us this opportunity to pick upwhere we left off. We had to face the world. We had to make a living. Thank God thegovernment had the doors open for us.
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The G.I. Bills transformative effects on the lives of men like Marchesi have become

legendary, but just as striking in hindsight is the clearly visible role that governmentplayed as the source of those opportunities. In more recent decades the federalgovernment has expanded its efforts to provide college aid to all Americans. But insteadof delivering a straight benefit, like the original G.I. Bill, most of that aid has comethrough roundabout means, like payments to banks to provide students with loans, orloopholes in the tax code to subsidize families to save for or pay for college. Generationsof Americans have now graduated with the help of these costly-though-indirect programs.Yet over the years, in conversations with my own students, Ive noticed that, unlikeMarchesi, few of them recognize that theyve received benefits from government. Itshard to imagine them reflecting on their HOPE Tax Credits, or their 529 and Coverdellcollege savings plans and saying, Thank God the government had the door open for us.

And its not just my students. In 2008, I conducted a survey to gauge the degree to whichAmericans who had received various government social benefits recognized them assuch. Not surprisingly, most beneficiaries of the G.I. Bill who took part in the surveyacknowledged that they had been given a leg up by the government. But of therespondents who made use of tax-advantaged Coverdell or 529 education savingsaccounts, 64 percent said they had not used a government social program, as did 59.6percent of those who used HOPE and Lifelong Learning Tax Credits.

This disparity has far less to do with some inherent difference in character between theGreatest Generation and their grandchildren than it does with a fundamental change thathas taken place in the relationship between citizens and the welfare state. Over the pastfew decades, while many standard social benefits have atrophied in real value, thosepackaged as tax expendituresthe formal name in federal budgeting parlance forsubsidies provided through the tax codehave flourished, growing rapidly in value andnumber. These tax expenditures for individuals and families represented 7.4 percent of


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GDP in 2008, up from 4.2 percent in 1976. (Tax expenditures for business, such as thosefor the oil and gas industry, made up another 1 percent.) By way of comparison, SocialSecurity amounted to 4.3 percent of GDP in 2008; Medicare and Medicaid, 4.1 percent.

These social tax expenditures comprise a major part of what I call the submerged state.

By that I mean that they are public policies designed in a manner that channels resourcesto citizens indirectly, through subsidies for private activities, rather than directly throughpayments or services from government. As a result, they are largely hidden from thepublic: through them, government benefits people, providing them with opportunities andrelieving their financial burdens, often without them even knowing it. Appearing toemanate from the private sector, such policies obscure the role of the government andexaggerate that of the market.

Whats more, the vast majority of Americans garner only modest assistance, if any, fromthe submerged state. In the case of social tax expenditures, thats because the mostexpensive of these subsidies shower their largest benefits on the most affluent Americans.

The great drama now unfolding in Washington over how to deal with the governmentsdeficits and growing debt tends to be framed in conventional ways. Conservatives aim touse this moment to reduce the size of big government while liberals find themselves onthe defensive, hoping to limit the damage and furious at the president and Democraticcongressional leaders for not fighting harder. But these negotiations can actually be animportant opportunity to advance progressive goals, ifas the Bowles-SimpsonCommission and others have recommended we scale back tax expenditures. Doing socould improve the nations balance sheet and restore some fairness to the tax code. Evenmore, it could address the real if inchoate sense many Americans have that governmenthas been growing, as measured by deficits and new programs, but in ways that dont

benefit them. Saying good-bye to the submerged state could reconnect citizens withgovernment and reinvigorate our democracy.

The clarion call of the conservative approach to governance that has dominated Americanpolitics for much of the past thirty years has been the demand to rein in the welfare state.Although few provisions have suffered outright termination, average benefit rates forseveral traditional and longstanding policiessuch as welfare, unemployment insurance,Pell grants, and food stampshave deteriorated in real terms, and in some cases thescope of coverage has atrophied. As deficit hawks continually remind us, costs havegrown for the entitlement programsSocial Security, Medicare, and Medicaidowing to inflation-protected benefits, soaring health care costs, and the sheer numbers ofAmericans aging into eligibility. Generally ignored, however, have been the rapidlyescalating costs of tax expenditures for social welfare purposesthesine qua non of oursubmerged state.

Known in informal parlance as tax breaks or tax loopholes,these policies permit households to pay less in taxes if they are involved in some kind ofactivity or belong to a class that policymakers deem worthy of public support. From thetime Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 until 2010, the number of such tax subsidies had


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increased by 86 percent, from 81 to 151. As of 2011, the federal government annuallydoles out more than $1 trillion in these tax expenditures.

Understandably, to many people tax breaks may seem substantively different fromtraditional social benefits. The latter are funded by tax revenues collected from the public

and delivered through checks or services to particular citizens, whereas tax breaksfunction by allowing recipients themselves simply to keep more money, reducing theamount that they would otherwise owe. Traditional social programs also require thedevelopment of a bureaucracy to determine eligibility and deliver benefits, whereas thetax expenditures do not. For these reasons, many libertarians and conservatives object tothe term tax expenditures. While conceding that tax loopholes constitute governmentintervention in the market, such thinkers equate closing them with raising taxes, unlessthe changes are offset by lower rates.

As a matter of budgeting, however, there is no difference between a tax break and asocial program: both have to be paid for, either by raising tax rates or by adding to the

deficit. Eugene Steuerle, a tax economist and political appointee in the Reaganadministration, said of the distinction between tax expenditures and direct socialspending, One looks like smaller government; one looks like bigger government. In fact,they both do exactly the same thing. Certainly their status has not eluded thepolicymakers who crafted them; the Louisiana senator Russell Long, chair of the SenateFinance Committee from 1966 to 1981 and the father of the Earned Income Tax Credit,said of the term tax expenditures, That label dont bother me. Ive never beenconfused about it. Ive always known that what were doing was giving governmentmoney away.

The largest tax expenditures have been around at least half a century, each the product of

inadvertent origins. As political scientist Christopher Howard of the College of William& Mary has observed, policymakers involved in the haphazard array of decisions thatgenerated these policies could not have imagined that they were establishing benefits thatby the late twentieth century would gain quasi-entitlement status and cost the nationburgeoning amounts. Of the three most expensive ones, the Home Mortgage InterestDeduction was created first, as part of the original tax code in 1913; the preferential taxtreatment of employer pensions was established through a hodgepodge of administrativerulings and congressional statues between 1914 and 1926; and the tax-privileged status ofemployer-provided health benefits resulted from a similar conglomeration of policiesduring World War II and in the 1950s. In 2011, these three pillars of the submerged stateare expected to cost the nation $104.5 billion, $67.1 billion, and $177 billion,respectively. The cost of each component has ballooned, owing not only to market forcesbut also to the incentives the policies themselves offer that promote consumption inparticular formssuch as the purchase of bigger homes, pricier college educations, ormore expensive health carethus inflating their value.

Remarkably, despite the vast drain such provisions impose on federal resources,policymakers have mostly allowed them to grow unchecked. Unlike direct social


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spending, they are not subject to the annual appropriations process in Congress, and thusthey have been able to snowball while sheltered from the public glare.

Whereas mainstream Democrats have traditionally taken the lead in creating ourlandmark direct social programs, it was originally Republicans and conservative

Democrats who initiated the benefits that operated through the tax code.Doing soenabled them to court their favored constituencies and channel resources toward them,but without creating or enlarging government bureaucracies to distribute the funds.

Over the past three decades, however, tax expenditures have evolved into the template ofchoice for anyone designing new social benefits. Conservatives have actively promotedand protected them, and moderate and liberal Democrats have realized that it is far easierto build a coalition of support for social provision through the tax system rather thanthrough direct spending. Thus they have become willing accomplices. President Clintonpromoted and signed into law higher education tax credits, a policy favored byRepublicans as an alternative to direct spending ever since the creation of the Higher

Education Act of 1965; he also expanded dramatically the Earned Income Tax Credit.President Obama has treated tax expenditures as a policy tool for achieving a broad arrayof objectives; tax benefits accounted for 37 percent of the $787 billion stimulus he signedinto law in 2009, including everything from expansions of existing programs to creditsfor first-time home buyers and those who purchased energy-efficient doors, windows,and appliances.

But the broader goals of progressive politics are undermined by tax expenditures.Reducing them is a goal we should embrace. The problems start with their redistributiveimpact.

Most Americans assume that U.S. government social programs aid primarily the poor andthe middle class, but tax expenditures generally shower their most generous benefits onthose in the upper reaches of the income spectrum. To be sure, there are exceptionsmost notably the EITC, which genuinely aids the working poor, and Clintons HOPEcredit, which targeted the middle class. But in the main, such policies are upwardlyredistributive, despite rhetoric to the contrary.

On the rare occasions when policymakers do actually speak about the Home MortgageInterest Deduction, they portray it as a middle-class benefit that helps to increase homeownership, a pillar of the American dream. Yet countries such as Canada and Australiamanage to have U.S.-level rates of home ownership without offering a home mortgageinterest deduction in their tax codes. Moreover, in 2004, 69 percent of the benefits ofAmericas home mortgage interest deduction were claimed by households with incomesof $100,000 or abovethe top 15 percent of the income distribution.That same groupalso reaped 55 percent of the benefits emanating from the tax-free status of retirementbenefits and 30 percent of those from employer-provided health benefits. This is becausemost tax expenditures reward activities that people with greater resources are betterpoised to take part in: buying more expensive homes and qualifying for mortgages farbigger than those of the typical home buyer; or obtaining generous employer-provided


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benefits, whose previously broad coverage has declined sharply, particularly among thosewith low to moderate incomes. Tax expenditures also exacerbate economic inequality bydramatically reducing the revenues government collects, leaving considerably fewerresources available for the programs like Head Start and Pell grants that benefit lower-income Americans.

Even more harmful to the United States than the economiceffects of these submerged state policies are the effects of the politics they generate. Thevested interests that profit from these policiesranging from the real estate and healthcare industries to the nonprofit foundation worldare keenly aware of them and investheavily in their political capacity to preserve and defend core policies. For example, theamount the real estate sector contributed to campaigns more than tripled between 1992and 2008, growing from $43 million to $138 million in 2010 dollars. Its spending onlobbying escalated far more quickly, increasing by 73 percent between 1998 and 2009.

Ordinary Americans, by contrast, have little awareness of the very existence of such

policies, even if they are beneficiaries themselves. In the 2008 survey I mentioned above,respondents were asked whether they had ever used a government social program, ornot and later queried on whether they had ever utilized any of nineteen different socialbenefits. Those who had benefited from tax expenditures were most likely to deny havingused a government social programfor example, 60 percent of those who had used theHome Mortgage Interest Deduction gave that answer.

To make sure respondents werent just reacting negatively to the term government socialprogramwhich for some Americans may connote welfare for low-income peoplethesurvey also asked participants whether they agreed with the statement Government hasgiven me opportunities to improve my standard of living. Among people with the same

income, level of education, age, race or ethnicity, and sex, the greater the number ofdirect, visible policies they had ever usedfrom a list including Social Security, foodstamps, Pell grants, unemployment insurance, and several othersthe more likely theywere to agree with this statement. Yet, controlling for the same factors, the more taxexpenditures the individual had used, the less likely he or she was to agree. Those whoused the visible programs could see government improving their life chances, but thosewho used the hidden ones failed to observe such effects.

This finding is ironic, because policymakers of both parties routinely justify taxexpenditures by claiming that they either provide people with opportunitiesforexample, to pursue education or home ownershipor they improve their standard ofliving. Such policy effects appear to be lost on the beneficiaries themselveswho, infact, seem fairly convinced that government did notassist them. The submerged design oftax benefits appears to mistakenly convey to people that they have gained whatevermeasure of economic security or opportunity they have strictly through their own merits,unaided by government help.


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We might expect that even if recipients of tax expenditures do not recognize them as

public social benefits, then at least the lower tax bills they enjoy as a result wouldgenerate more positive views about the tax system. I examined this possibility in thesame survey by asking people whether they felt that the amount they were asked to pay infederal income taxes was more than [their] fair share, their fair share, or less than[their] fair share, once again controlling for the factors noted above. All else equal, thegreater the number of visible policies individuals had used, the more likely they were tofeel that they paid less than [their] fair share. By contrast, however, tax expendituresseemed to have no discernible impact on their beneficiaries attitudes about taxes,regardless of the enormous drain these policies impose on federal budgets. Evidently,beneficiaries of visible policies understood that taxes help to pay for such programs,whereas those who prospered from the policies of the submerged state failed to grasp that

connection.

Not surprisingly, given the invisibility of tax expenditures to most Americans, theygenerate a passive public. If people are barely aware that such policies emanate fromgovernment, then they are obviously unlikely to have opinions about them that reflecttheir interests and values, or to engage in political participation related to them. The same2008 survey also asked beneficiaries of specific policies who had indicated that theyparticipated in political activities whether they had ever done so with that policy in mind.For example, beneficiaries who had voted were asked if they had ever taken intoaccount the position of a candidate on the [program used] in deciding either how orwhether to vote, and, if they had ever made campaign contributions, whether they did so

at least in part, because of [their] concern about [the program used].

Beneficiaries of visible programs like Social Security and Medicare reported high rates ofaction to influence the policies they rely onfar more than beneficiaries of taxexpenditures. Certainly part of the problem is that, whereas seniors are mobilized by theAARP and the political parties, no broad-based citizens groups advocate on behalf of thepublics interest in tax expenditures, leaving the vested interests power unchecked. Buteven beneficiaries of the food stamps program, who lack a group to mobilize them,targeted their political activity at higher rates than the tax break beneficiaries: amongthose who had voted, 21 percent reported taking the policy into account when doing so,compared to only 14 percent of Home Mortgage Interest Deduction beneficiaries; therates for campaign contributing among those same groups were 17.7 percent and 8.1percent, respectively. In short, while the policies of the submerged state engenderactivism among the powerful groups that benefit most from their existence, they inculcateonly passivity among ordinary citizens. This means not only that their interests areroutinely circumvented through these upwardly distributive policies, but also thatdemocracy itself is undermined by their existence.


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Given how unaware the average citizen is of the submerged state, its no surprise thatdecisions to cut or expand it typically happen with little public airing, usually as part ofsome larger debate over budgets and taxes. In his first budget to Congress, PresidentObama proposed to rein in the tax breaks given to the most affluent Americans via

deductions for charitable contributions and home mortgage interest by capping theirvalue at a rate lower than the marginal tax rate assigned to those in the upper incomebrackets. Instead of being able to deduct 39 or 36 percent of the value of their mortgages,in other words, single Americans making more than $174,400 per year would only beable to deduct 28 percentthe same as those who earn $83,600 a year. (This changewould actually have reinstated restrictions on tax breaks that existed during the 1990s,signed into law by President George H. W. Bush and ended by his son George W. Bushin 2001. During the decade in which these restrictions were in place, housing prices andcharitable contributions soared.) Obamas proposal was projected to save the federalgovernment $267 billion over ten years45 percent of the funds needed to finance healthcare reform.

Instantly, the proposal set in motion the typical politics of the submerged state, as vestedinterests rallied to defend their pet policies while the public remained out of the loop.Each of the organizational likely suspects in the real estate industry stormed CapitolHill, circulated letters to all elected officials, and placed ads in prominent newspapers inorder to express their unequivocal opposition to the changes. Charles McMillan,president of the National Association of Realtors, said, Diminishing or eliminating [theHome Mortgage Interest Deduction] would hurt all families, the housing market, and our


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national economy language that cloaked the fact that the proposed changes wouldaffect only the wealthy, and would simply reinstate prior policies. Perhaps moresurprisingly, the philanthropic, foundation, and nonprofit sector mobilized just as quicklyand in some ways more effectively than the real estate sector. They committed two-thirds as much to lobbying$44 millionbut as the presumed beacon of altruism, they

were able to stir even more opposition to Obamas plan. Claiming the moral high ground,the Council on Foundations and others predicted sharp declines in charitable giving if thetax benefit was reduced. Even Democratic leaders in Congress quickly distancedthemselves from the presidents proposal.

At one press conference, reporters pressed Obama on whether he regretted putting forththe idea, to which he answered forthrightly,

People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. It just means if yougive $100 and youre in this tax bracket instead of being able to write off 36 or 39percent, youre writing off 28 percent. Now, if its really a charitable contribution, Im

assuming that shouldnt be the determining factor as to whether youre giving thathundred dollars to the homeless shelter. What it would do is it would equalize. When Igive $100, I get the same amount of deduction as a bus driver whos making $50,000or $40,000 a year [who] give[s] that same hundred dollars. [H]e gets to write off 28percent, I get to write off 39 percent. I dont think thats fair.

This explanationa rare instance in which a public official clearly articulated how taxbreaks function and who benefits failed to be heard amid the fray, as executivedirectors of numerous philanthropic organizations wrote to Congress insisting that theproposal would impose a tax on charitable giving. The proposal never had a chance.Rent-seeking crony capitalism reigned, with interest groups protecting the subsidies that

benefited themselves and the affluent, and ordinary Americans had no inkling of whathad transpired.

Would ordinary citizens be more likely to support efforts like Obamas if they were betterinformed about them? A survey-based experiment I conducted with Matt Guardino ofSyracuse University in 2008 suggests the answer is yes. After respondents were providedwith basic information about the upwardly redistributive effect of the Home MortgageInterest Deduction the fact that it benefits mostly affluent peopleopposition grewsharply, particularly among those with low to moderate incomes and among liberals andDemocrats. By contrast, after being informed that the EITC benefited mostly those inlow-to-moderate-income groups,support grew among respondents generally, regardlessof income.

These findings are consistent with what we know about contemporary American attitudestoward taxes in general. Countless polls in recent years have shown that strong majoritiesof voters favor higher taxes on the wealthy as the way to close budget deficits and shoreup entitlements like Social Security. Similar majorities would likely favor cutting taxexpenditures for the well-off if the issue were explained to them.


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At present, however, few opinion leaders, even on the left, have taken up the cause of taxexpenditure reform, except on a few issues, such as ending tax subsidies for oilcompanies. Indeed, some of the most sophisticated and influential seem confused aboutthe subject. Comedian-commentator Jon Stewart, for instance, has mercilessly skeweredRepublicans for defending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But when Obama gave a

speech in April calling for spending reductions in the tax code, Stewart took thepositioncommon among conservatives that the president was engaging indoublespeak:

What? The tax code isnt where we spend. Its where we collect. You managed to talkabout a tax hike as a spending reduction. Can we afford that and the royalty checksyoull have to send to George Orwell?

American politics today is ensnared in the paradox of the submerged state. Ourgovernment is integrally intertwined with everyday life from health care to housing, butin a form that eludes our vision because it makes governance invisible. As a result, many

Americans express disdain for government social spending, incognizant even when theythemselves benefit from it. They are disturbed by growing deficits, but do not realize thatpolicies whose benefits flow disproportionately to the affluent consume a large portion ofgrowing federal entitlements. They are easily seduced by calls for small government, notrealizing that champions of that philosophy brought us the most costly policies of thesubmerged state.

Political and opinion leaders permit this deception to persist by failing to talk openly andhonestly about tax expenditures. A minor exception to the rule, Obama has shown that heis quite capable of speaking clearly and candidly about how such policies work and whobenefits from them, but the number of occasions when he has done so have been few and

far between. His own party in Congress has yet to join him in a full-throated manner; infact, its leaders themselves torpedoed his efforts in 2009. Without discussion of what isactually at stake in spending through the tax code, citizens are not told what thesesubsidies really are: special provisions for particular groups of people, especially thewealthy, that are paid for through either higher taxes on other Americans, reductions inspending, or expansions of our deficit.

For too long, progressives have accepted the conservative playbook, creating andexpanding tax expenditures on the assumption that they can tilt some of their benefits tolow- and middle-income Americans. As long as this cornerstone of the submerged state isleft intact, it fosters the delusion that governance is generally ineffective and unhelpful tomost Americans, and it prompts people to attribute to markets more credit than they aredue.

Fortunately, and rather ironically, the coming showdown over raising the debt ceilingpresents a golden opportunity to substantially scale back the submerged stateand toadvance progressive goals in the process. Republican lawmakers, obliged by their base tocut federal spending but fearing an electoral backlash if popular social programs likeMedicare are decimated, are increasingly open to the suggestion of the Democratic deficit


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hawks in the administration and Congress that if the budget ax must fall, it ought to fallmost heavily on tax expenditures. It is a negotiating strategy that liberals would be wiseto encourage. For those who care about reducing inequality, making Americangovernance more transparent, and reinvigorating democratic citizenship, this is a chancethat should not be missed.

Suzanne Mettleris Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions at CornellUniversity. Her latest book, The Submerged State: How Invisible Government PoliciesUndermine American Democracy, will be published this fall by the University ofChicago Press.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]

rich get more in tax breaks then the poor get from welfare

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