Not A Class Act

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Republicans were no more eager to make unpopular decisions. Their preferred alternative to higher taxes was lower spending, but during the summer negotiations they managed to agree only on a paltry $6 billion in cuts when $40 billion was needed. That failure did not stop Idaho Senator Steve Symms from decrying what he labeled a Democratic effort "to make this national crisis into some kind of a modern-day version of the French Revolution where the poor people are facing off against the royal aristocracy."

Most taxpayers were not beguiled by false promises of fairness or mobilized by calls to class warfare. Many have long since lost patience with politicians from both parties who called for sacrifice and then voted themselves a pay raise, who lauded fiscal responsibility and then refused to cancel gold-plated weapons systems such as the B-2. Their cynicism was deepened by the Ways and Means Committee's refusal to divulge that it was grafting dozens of tax breaks for industries -- ranging from fisheries to nuclear power-plant owners -- onto its budget proposal during secret closed-door sessions. "People are tired of bailing out politicians," says Rutgers University pollster Janice Ballou. "The public sees one disaster after the next, and it's always, 'O.K., taxpayer, that's another $8 billion that we messed up with. But it's O.K., you can just pay us back.' After a while, the frustration just builds and builds and builds."

The spectacle of the past three weeks was all the more disillusioning given the dreams of the roaring '80s. Many middle-class voters genuinely believed the Reagan-era theme that tax breaks rained onto the wealthy would eventually trickle down to the economy as a whole, that lower taxes would generate so much investment and rapid growth that spending on defense and entitlements could mushroom, and that gaping deficits would not matter. But a looming recession, quickening inflation and mounting evidence that the rich have got richer while much of the middle class has enjoyed no improvement in living standards have changed the equation. "Middle-income Americans feel aggrieved, and rightly so, because they aren't getting as much from government as they used to, and they're paying more for it," says Bruce Fisher, research director for Citizens for Tax Justice. "They're been encouraged to direct their resentment at the poor, especially poor blacks, whom they see as the major recipients of government services."

There is, in fact, plenty of anger directed down the social ladder. John Budzash earns $30,000 a year as a mail carrier in New Jersey and is leading a campaign to fight higher state taxes. Like many working people, he resents squeezing out more money for gasoline in order to fund social programs that he finds wasteful. "I work with one guy who works four jobs," he says. "He gets up in the morning, delivers a paper route, goes back home, picks up his , next newspaper route, then he goes to work at the post office, goes home and sleeps for a couple of hours and then tends bar at night. When you see that other people don't have the gumption to work one job, and you're telling that person who's breaking his butt that he's got to pick up the tab for someone who doesn't work -- I have strong objections to that."