MB Civic

By Robert Kuttner  |  June 10, 2006  |  The IT HAS now become less politically risky for Democrats to accept gay marriage than to support taxing the richest 1 percent of Americans. And that reality speaks volumes about the Democratic dilemma.

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans offered a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that they knew had no chance of passage. Their purpose was simple and cynical: Rally the faltering Republican hard-core base, and force a vote that they hoped would embarrass Democrats.

The constitutional measure, which required 67 votes to pass, got only 49. Just one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, supported it. Seven Republicans, including all five New England GOP senators, voted against. It’s not that most Democrats endorse same-sex marriage (though civil union commands wide support). Democrats said they opposed the measure because marriage is an issue for the states. Yet you can be sure that in this fall’s elections, Republicans will chide Democrats for failing to vote for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

A day later, the Senate took up repeal of the estate tax. Just one estate in 100 pays the tax. At a time when deficits are headed skyward, the Iraq war is costing a projected $1.3 trillion, and valued domestic public outlays are being sacrificed on the altar of deficit-reduction, repeal of estate taxes would balloon deficits by another trillion dollars over a decade.

Yet in Thursday’s vote to cut off debate, fully 57 senators (three short of the necessary 60) voted for total and permanent repeal. They included four Democrats, including the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana.

Despite this defeat for repeal, the issue isn’t dead. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, joined by enabler Baucus, is promoting a “compromise” to keep a token estate tax, applied only to estates of $5 million to $7 million and with a far lower rate. This would increase deficits by $300 billion to $500 billion.

Several Democrats attended a strategy meeting convened by Baucus after the vote to consider what partial repeal they might support. These reportedly included Ken Salazar of Colorado, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Prior of Arkansas, Maria Cantwell of Washington State, and Nelson. All of these worthies, save Nelson, found the nerve to vote against the gay marriage ban.

The idea that same-sex marriage somehow threatens traditional marriage is of course preposterous. A New Yorker cartoon expressed it best. A wife, bags packed, tells her husband: “It’s not you, it’s gay marriage.” So Democrats are to be applauded for not succumbing to demagoguery on the issue. But the Democratic Party has taken a bullet for its intermittent progress in advancing gay and other rights.

The remedy is not to back off on rights issues, but to remember where Democrats stand on economic ones. For if anything can bullet-proof the Democrats’ tolerance on social issues, it is delivering for the pocketbooks of working Americans.

During the past 30 years, per capita gross domestic product has about doubled, yet about four Americans in five are actually worse off. All the growth went to the top, mostly to the top 1 percent. But three decades of Republican government-bashing, often with such Democrats as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton piling on, have made it nearly impossible for Democrats to deliver remedies.

There’s a paradox here. Big programs enacted in a bolder era, such as Social Security, Medicare, and college aid, are immensely popular, suggesting a latent support for tax-and-spend. But expectations about what government can do to help ordinary people have been so lowered that many Democrats are now reluctant to tax even the richest to pay for programs that benefit everyone else.

Another vote this week was emblematic. California voters rejected a ballot initiative to provide optional pre-kindergarten for all 4-year-olds. The measure was to be financed by a new surtax that would hit only individuals making over $400,000 a year, and $800,000 for couples. Most politicians just ducked.

What could change this blockage? Leadership, both by elected officials and activists. Here in Massachusetts, the Legislature managed to begin the process of providing universal health coverage, partly defrayed by a token tax on businesses that fail to cover their workers. The sky didn’t fall.

Since Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrats’ winning formula has been to serve economic needs of ordinary people, and use that political capital to expand rights for often unpopular minorities. The opposite formula just doesn’t work. Defending the richest doesn’t buy running room to advance rights, and it leaves Democrats with little to offer economically frustrated Americans save more tax-cutting.