Ohio’s Tim Ryan thinks the way for Democrats to win elections is to become Republican-lite

Only some­one inhab­it­ing a bub­ble could pos­si­bly believe that the way for Democ­rats to win in 2018 is by embrac­ing the agen­da of the Unit­ed States Cham­ber of Com­merce. But that’s exact­ly what Tim Ryan of Ohio wants to do.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic Rep. Tim Ryan is going against par­ty lead­ers and call­ing for a busi­ness friend­ly agen­da ahead of the 2018-midterm elections.

“To be com­pet­i­tive glob­al­ly, we have to reduce the cor­po­rate tax rate,” Ryan told The Hill in an inter­view from his Youngstown, Ohio, dis­trict office. “We’re just not com­pet­i­tive glob­al­ly because of that.”

Ryan, a fast-ris­ing Demo­c­rat from indus­tri­al Ohio, is chal­leng­ing Democ­rats to take a dif­fer­ent approach to big busi­ness and work with cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca to cre­ate jobs.

“We can’t just be the par­ty of redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth; we need to be the par­ty of the cre­ation of wealth in com­mu­ni­ties all over the coun­try, not to just Sil­i­con Val­ley, not just Wall Street, but all over.”

What a pile of nonsense.

First of all, Ryan is wrong that our cor­po­rate tax rate needs to be reduced.

The tax code could cer­tain­ly be made fair­er by elim­i­nat­ing exemp­tions not in the pub­lic inter­est, but slash­ing tax rates as he and Repub­li­cans want to do would result in harm to essen­tial fed­er­al pub­lic ser­vices and pre­vent us from address­ing our infra­struc­ture deficit, which is reach­ing mas­sive proportions.

Research has shown that the effec­tive tax rate that cor­po­ra­tions pay is not that dif­fer­ent from what for­eign com­pa­nies pay. In oth­er words, the notion that we aren’t com­pet­i­tive glob­al­ly is hog­wash. Busi­ness trade groups just want every­body to believe that so they can get their self-serv­ing agen­da of tax cuts through.

In 2014, the respect­ed Con­gres­sion­al Research Ser­vice pub­lished a paper on this very sub­ject (PDF). Wrote Jane G. Grav­elle, Senior Spe­cial­ist in Eco­nom­ic Policy:

Is the U.S. tax rate high­er than the rest of the world, and what does that dif­fer­ence imply for tax pol­i­cy? The answer depends, in part, on which tax rates are being com­pared. Although the U.S. statu­to­ry tax rate is high­er, the aver­age effec­tive rate is about the same, and the mar­gin­al rate on new invest­ment is only slight­ly higher.

Writ­ing for Forbes, Mar­tin Sul­li­van com­pared oth­er research on cor­po­rate tax rates to that of the CRS, includ­ing the Busi­ness Round­table, which favors tax cuts.

His bot­tom line? “The con­clu­sion reached by the CRS report is more accu­rate than that of the Busi­ness Round­table. On aver­age, the for­eign effec­tive tax rate is not much low­er than the U.S. domes­tic tax rate.”

The vaunt­ed Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute rein­forced these find­ings ear­li­er this year when it pub­lished a report declar­ing that cut­ting cor­po­rate tax rates will not cre­ate jobs or boost incomes for the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies.

Sec­ond, Ryan is wrong that Democ­rats can win in 2018 by co-opt­ing the Repub­li­can Par­ty’s agen­da for the country.

Repub­li­cans already con­trol the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment; to win Con­gress, Democ­rats will need to present a com­pelling alter­na­tive plan for the coun­try based on the log­ic of pro­gres­sive val­ues — a plan that excites the base and intrigues bicon­cep­tu­al vot­ers who are weary or fed up with Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell.

The num­ber one rule in pol­i­tics is don’t alien­ate your base. But that is exact­ly what Ryan wants to do. The thought of Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates across the coun­try cam­paign­ing on a plat­form of cor­po­rate tax cuts is sim­ply grotesque.

The mil­lions of vot­ers ener­gized by Bernie Sanders’ rev­o­lu­tion­ary pres­i­den­tial cam­paign last year are not going to turn out to sup­port can­di­dates who would be lap­dogs for the U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce if elected.

Repub­li­cans are already for tax cuts for big cor­po­ra­tions and the wealthy. If that’s what Democ­rats run on, then vot­ers will right­ly per­ceive there is no dif­fer­ence between the par­ties, and con­gres­sion­al Repub­li­cans will be returned to pow­er for anoth­er two years. To put it anoth­er way, Democ­rats can­not beat Repub­li­cans by becom­ing the Repub­li­can Lite Par­ty — no mat­ter how dam­aged the Repub­li­can brand may be — because bicon­cep­tu­als will always grav­i­tate to the real thing.

Authen­tic­i­ty mat­ters in pol­i­tics. Trust matters.

To win the trust of vot­ers, Democ­rats need to offer a plat­form that is for the peo­ple, not for the cheaters who want to rig the sys­tem for their own ben­e­fit. A plat­form that empha­sizes ideas for build­ing a more inclu­sive economy.

Tim Ryan does­n’t sound inter­est­ed in build­ing a more inclu­sive econ­o­my. In the span of one inter­view, he man­aged to con­tra­dict him­self, first say­ing that Democ­rats need to be the par­ty of wealth cre­ation, not wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion (which is the lan­guage of the oth­er side) and then imme­di­ate­ly turn­ing around and endors­ing a pol­i­cy of “wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion” from coastal states to states like his:

Though Ryan says he’s con­fi­dent Democ­rats can take back the House in 2018, he insists a pro-busi­ness mes­sage will be key.

“If we could fig­ure out the big eco­nom­ic ques­tion, which real­ly is how do we get wealth out of the coasts and into the indus­tri­al Mid­west and start cre­at­ing real jobs by the hun­dreds, if not by the thou­sands, in places like I rep­re­sent that’s a game chang­er for me.”

Wrong again. The big eco­nom­ic ques­tion is how do we build a more inclu­sive econ­o­my that pro­vides broad pros­per­i­ty for our fam­i­lies and oppor­tu­ni­ties for all. (Notice how I reframed by using lan­guage that evokes pro­gres­sive ideas!)

Pit­ting regions of the coun­try against each oth­er and exploit­ing eco­nom­i­cal­ly impov­er­ished com­mu­ni­ties to fuel a cul­ture war is how the Repub­li­cans roll.

Cor­po­rate tax cuts are not the recipe for a more inclu­sive econ­o­my. We know from expe­ri­ence that good jobs don’t get cre­at­ed by hand­ing out tax cuts like candy.

A new report just out this week from the Insti­tute for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies offers fresh evi­dence that past cor­po­rate tax cuts boost­ed CEO pay — but not jobs.

Tax breaks did not spur job creation

• America’s 92 most con­sis­tent­ly prof­itable tax-dodg­ing firms reg­is­tered medi­an job growth of neg­a­tive 1 per­cent between 2008 and 2016. The job growth rate over those same years among U.S. pri­vate sec­tor firms as a whole: 6 percent.
• More than half of the 92 tax-avoiders, 48 firms in all, elim­i­nat­ed jobs between 2008 and 2016, down­siz­ing by a com­bined total of 483,000 positions.

Tim Ryan — whose name is so sim­i­lar to Tim Eyman that I’ve had to check to make sure I’m not typ­ing Eyman’s name instead out of habit — is appar­ent­ly igno­rant of the research I’ve cit­ed in this post. He’s not only drunk the U.S. Cham­ber’s Kool-Aid, he’s become a sales­man for it. It’s evi­dent from read­ing this inter­view he has com­plete­ly bought into the ideas of the oth­er side. That’s very unfortunate.

If Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers want to win in 2018, they must recruit and sup­port can­di­dates who will proud­ly and hap­pi­ly artic­u­late a pro­gres­sive mes­sage of eco­nom­ic inclu­sion, not fol­low Ohio’s Tim Ryan down the road to elec­toral doom.