President
Eisenhower supported positions that today’s Republicans call “communist”
By
Beware
of the specter of socialism!
Anytime
a politician proposes a wildly popular idea that helps ordinary people, a few
grumpy conservatives will call them “socialists.”
Propose to reduce college debt, help sick families, or ensure the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes — suddenly you’re a walking red nightmare.
Propose to reduce college debt, help sick families, or ensure the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes — suddenly you’re a walking red nightmare.
Utah
Republican Rep. Chris Stewart is so alarmed he’s convened an “Anti-Socialism Caucus” to ward off “the primitive appeal of socialism” that will “infect our
institutions.”
Democrats’
talk of restoring higher income tax rates on the wealthiest or helping families
with childcare was enough to trigger Treasury Secretary Steve Munchin to quip, “We’re not going back to
socialism.”
These
same politicians consistently vote for tax cuts for the rich and to gut taxes
and regulations on corporations so they can exercise their full freedom and
liberty — to mistreat workers, pollute the environment, and rip off their
customers.
The
“shrink government” fear-mongers want you to believe there are only two flavors
of economic ice cream. Choose strawberry and you get liberty-choking gulag
communism.
From
this vantage, any proposal to rein in the unchecked power of global
corporations and the rule-rigging rich is creeping socialism.
Choice
number two, blueberry, is plutocracy, a society where the super-rich lord over
the rest of us. It’s an economically polarized dystopia with stagnant wages and
a declining standard of living for the majority.
Conservative
demagogues aim to scare you into embracing their pro-plutocrat agenda as the
only tolerable choice.
The
good news is there many flavors to choose from. A number of presidential
candidates have proposed or endorsed policies such as low cost or free college,
a higher minimum wage, taxing the super-rich, and investing in infrastructure
to reduce carbon emissions.
These
ideas are tremendously popular with voters, winning majority support among
Republicans, independents, and Democrats.
As
Fox News sheepishly reported from their own polling, over 70 percent of voters support tax hikes on households with over $10
million in income — including 54 percent of Republicans.
What
would today’s hysterical Republicans say about the “socialist” presidency of
Dwight Eisenhower? Most likely they would call him “Red Ike.”
After
all, during Eisenhower’s two terms between 1953 and 1960, the wealthy paid a
top tax rate of 91 percent on incomes over the equivalent of $1.7 million for
an individual and $3.4 million for a couple.
That
crafty pinko Eisenhower also presided over government-subsidized mortgages that
helped millions of Americans purchase their first home and attend college for
free. He presided over the construction of public housing and state-owned infrastructure (like highways).
In
the early 1960s, the specter of socialism stalked the land again, this time in
the form of a proposal to create a national health insurance program to cover
senior citizens.
Conservatives
mounted a full-throated resistance movement to what George H.W. Bush at the
time called “socialized medicine.”
The
rest of us know it as Medicare.
Prior
to the passage of Medicare in 1965, half of the country’s seniors didn’t have
hospital insurance, and one in four went without medical care due to cost
concerns.
One
in three seniors were in poverty.
Half a century later, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care, and the elderly poverty rate has fallen to 14 percent.
Half a century later, nearly all seniors have access to affordable health care, and the elderly poverty rate has fallen to 14 percent.
Now
a majority of Americans support some form of “Medicare for All,” expanding
universal coverage beyond seniors and disabled people to include children and
adults.
Stay
tuned for more fear mongering.
Universal health care, the red baiters will say, will zap our national initiative and hurl us toward Soviet-style tyranny. Instead, maybe it will mean not having to choose between paying rent or for medicine.
Universal health care, the red baiters will say, will zap our national initiative and hurl us toward Soviet-style tyranny. Instead, maybe it will mean not having to choose between paying rent or for medicine.
Chuck Collins directs the
Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by
OtherWords.org.
