Listening That Truly Was

The second--and actual--listening session I attended yesterday was held by Wisconsin Assemblymembers Tony Staskunas and David Cullen in West Allis. Their purpose was to give an opportunity to be heard to the people who had been shut out from speaking at an official public hearing last month on Gov. Scott Walker's 2011 budget and budget repair bill. Although the venue at the West Allis Library was considerably smaller than the Whitnall High School auditorium in Greenfield when Ryan held his session, it too was SRO.

After a brief introduction, Assemblymen Staskunas and Cullen invited every one of the 50 to 75 people who were there to speak for up to five minutes. I didn't keep count, but many did--including me, although when I decided to attend the session and even after I arrived, I certainly had no intention to do so.

I thanked the assemblymen for providing people the opportunity they were affording their constituents, remarked about the difference between that session and Ryan's and raised the question I would have asked had Ryan called on me.

My question was based on Ryan's "path to prosperity" in America idea of flattening the tax rate for everybody, which he says would result in lower taxes for everybody.

Although Ryan's flatter-tax stucture and lower taxes for everyone, including multibillionaire hedgefunders who pay, at most, 15 percent on their income because they are allowed to claim it as capital gains instead of the top income rate of 35 percent sounds good, it is antithetical to reality, based on this country's history.

For example, the 1950s, which was our country's most prosperous decade in modern times, had a tax structure that was anything but flat--those in the highest income bracket were taxed at 90 percent. And guess what, they remained rich, very rich.

And if cutting taxes really would set us on a "path to prosperity," why then didn't that happen when George W. Bush cut taxes in 2001 and again in 2003, cuts that were especially generous to the rich? Why, instead, did the country plunge into the deepest recession since the 1930s?

What really struck me at the West Allis session, though, was the willingness of these working-class, middle-America people to pay more taxes if it would mean saving programs that benefit their fellow citizens who are disadvantaged, lacking access to resources and suffering financially. One young man who was there with his wife and baby daughter personified what I thought was the stricking difference in tone and outlook between Ryan's session in which most of the people seemed to be more of the "I've got mine, so don't screw with it" crowd and the Staskunas-Cullen session.

"A community," the West Allis father said, "is judged on how it cares for its people."

The same thing, no doubt, is true about a nation.