Democrats and tax policy

Many Democrats bristle at being described as fans of big government and high taxes. But have they looked at the tax policies favored by either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?

While each takes a slightly different approach to the issue, a consistent theme nevertheless dominates the proposals offered by both candidates: higher taxes and a more complicated IRS code designed to push "progressive" social engineering schemes.

While seeking to preserve some of the Bush tax cuts through 2013, both Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama approve of resuscitating the death tax and letting most of the current tax rates rise 3 percentage points by the end of 2010, pushing the top rate to 39.6 percent -- resulting in one of the largest tax hikes in U.S. history.

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama offers various redistributionist proposals that would increase the number of people who pay no income taxes at all yet still receive "rebate" checks from the government. He also wants to almost double the capital gains tax.

At the same time, Sen. Clinton wants to jack rates on investment income and backs a bevy of "targeted" tax breaks she hopes will lead people to behave in ways that meet with her approval. Sen. Clinton "is proposing tax credits for everything short of flossing your teeth," Lee Sheppard, a tax lawyer, told Bloomberg News last week.

At a time when we desperately need a debate on how best to simplify the 66,000-page monstrosity that is the current tax code, each candidate eagerly embraces the opposite.

"The inevitable consequence," noted University of Michigan economist Joel Slemrod, "is to complicate the process." And to loot more and more money from the pockets of productive Americans in order to feed a morbidly obese federal bureaucracy.

So why would Democrats object to being characterized as tax-loving enablers of big government when neither of their potential standard-bearers apparently shares such an aversion?