Tax Cuts and Sacrifice

Amid all the good things about Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention was this sentence:

I will--listen now--I will cut taxes--cut taxes--for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

It may be that no candidate can win who promises to raise taxes. It may be that Obama's chances of winning are increased appreciably by promising to lower them. But no president will be able to create the programs needed to meet the challenges this country faces without making Americans pay for them.

Unfortunately, for all the concern about the current state of the economy and the problems of the poor and other people less fortunate than most, we do not feel pressed toward improvement. Americans are, by and large, comfortable. Our biggest challenges, it seems to us, are somewhere on the horizon. They don't stare us in the face. Action can be postponed.

What are these challenges? An aging workforce, with many nearing retirement. A crumbling infrastructure. An environment that will change utterly in the next generation. These three things alone will take many billions of dollars of government spending. They will also take personal sacrifice. Yet no one is talking about concrete measures to meet these challenges. Reform of social security and Medicare is off the agenda. The infrastructure is not talked about. Our environmental problems will be taken care of by tax incentives and research, as if something less than a fundamental change in how we live is needed (which it is, in my opinion, but I'll leave that argument for another time).

Obama, on the contrary, talks about new programs that will increase spending. Mind you, McCain and the Republicans are not paragons of fiscal probity. They have their own programs and tax cuts to offer the electorate. They see no more urgent need for us to tighten our belts than the Democrats do.

This shows how important it was that President Bush failed to ask for sacrifice in the wake of 9/11. He squandered a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ask us to act together as a community. The promise of Obama is that he offer us that opportunity again.

There were hints of that in the speech. For example, he suggested that college aid will be offered to those who serve, in the military or in some civilian capacity:

And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

That statement, with it's hint of new GI bill to reward those who serve, could be a whisper before a shout, a loud call to all of us to join together in common action to renew our country. We need that, rather than a plea to "Enrichez-vous," which the promise to cut taxes evokes. Would Americans respond? The success of the Obama campaign suggests that they might. I wish the answer were clearer, but we won't get it unless the call is made.