k-12 Tax & $pending Climate: “The party has promised to expand the welfare state, cut taxes for everyone but the rich, and bring down inflation and interest rates, but those goals will likely prove incompatible”
- Taxing the rich alone probably can’t fund a massive new safety net, yet even this year’s unusually Democratic electorate rejected broader tax hikes.
- To ease the tension between their priorities, Democrats should embrace policies that boost the economy’s productive capacity.
Two years from now, however, the blue tsunami’s size could matter enormously. Democrats are unlikely to do quite as well in the 2028 election as they did this year, when the Republican base largely abstained. But Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer’s party now has plenty of seats to spare. For this reason, if Democrats win the presidency in 2028, they are now extremely likely to also secure full control of Congress — and by comfortable margins.
This is no small thing. Under President Joe Biden, Democrats held only a bare Senate majority, enabling any individual senator to dictate the terms of their policymaking. A Democratic president has not had the chance to govern with robust congressional support since 2010.
Democrats are therefore within striking distance of a rare opportunity — a chance to enact their economic agenda without asking Republicans or their party’s most unreliable centrists for permission.
To seize this historic opening, Democrats will need to formulate a platform that effectively advances their core goals. Unfortunately, this will be harder than it sounds — because the party’s current economic priorities appear incompatible with each other.
During the midterm campaign, Democrats promised to:
Democrats have good reason for embracing all of these objectives. In the last three federal elections, voters punished incumbents for presiding over a rising cost of living. So any governing party would be eager to reduce inflation and borrowing costs, both of which continue to trend in the wrong direction.
