What's in a name? Well, for one thing, political success or failure. It is now commonplace to give every piece of legislation a positive-sounding name no matter what it does. Consequently, it has become unexceptional for informed critics to give short shrift to obviously Orwellian names. Take, for example, President Bush's environmental policy. Each plan is named for the opposite of its actual effect. So we have both a Clear Skies Initiative (more air pollution) and a Healthy Forests Initiative (more clear cutting).
These false names hide the real purpose of the initiatives-helping business at the expense of the environment. Unfortunately, for the man on the street, these confusing names may successfully mask the policies in question.
Most people who follow the news get it from network television. That means they get soundbites sandwiched between commercials and bookended by local human interest stories, not serious analysis. This is a fact of life in modern America. Thus, if the Democrats want to keep up with the Republicans, they should adopt Republican efforts to define the terms of the debate to favor their own agenda, while still striving to be truthful.
For example, they should call the tort system the \tort justice system"" since it's analogous to the criminal justice system. Torts are just civil wrongs instead of criminal wrongs. Calling ""tort reform"" what it is-an effort to limit access to the justice system-makes a political point every time you refer to the ""tort justice system"" by name.
Perhaps the most instructive naming debate surrounds the estate tax. The federal government taxes the transfer of funds through a person's estate. You don't pay income taxes on gifts or inheritance you receive, but the donor pays a small amount based on what they give. Republicans have waged a moderately successful campaign to label this tax a ""death tax,"" since that's when you leave money to your heirs. Understandably, most people don't want a death tax. Death is already bad enough without the taxman coming around to make it worse.
But of course the estate tax doesn't tax death, it taxes the transfer of wealth. And it only taxes the transfer of huge amounts of wealth. Dying doesn't bring a tax bill on its own. Before the estate tax takes a single dollar of anyone's inheritance, the donor has to be passing more than $1.5 million. Even halfway decent tax planning can push this tax-free amount much higher. If Democrats wanted to convince average Americans to support the estate tax, they would start calling it the ""billionaire's tax,"" because you need to be that wealthy to actually pay it. Only a tiny percentage of Americans ever have to pay a single dollar in estate tax.
Also contrary to conservative rhetoric, the estate tax doesn't hurt family businesses. It's easy to structure transactions to avoid negative tax consequences. Likewise, despite nearly a decade of claims that the estate tax breaks up family farms which are rich in land (and thus big enough to trigger the tax) but poor in cash (and thus unable to pay the bill save by selling the farm) no one has ever found a single incident where this has occurred. The reason is simple-the vast majority of farms don't trigger the tax. That's because only the super rich pay the ""billionaire's tax."" Ordinary farm families do just fine.
Having the ""billionaire's tax"" doesn't hurt ordinary folks like a ""death tax"" would, but it does help the market run smoothly. The estate tax stops rich people from racking up huge fortunes and then passing them on to their children tax-free. It's necessary to prevent an inherited aristocracy of wealth. In order for the American Dream to have any meaning, new investors and business people need a chance to enter the world of commerce and make it big. If ownership becomes tied up in wealthy families without the children ever having to raise a finger, we take opportunity away from real entrepreneurs. We stop rewarding those smart enough to make it in the market, and start rewarding those lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon. That's why Bill Gates, Sr. publicly supports the estate tax-it gave his son the chance to live the dream.
There's no way to end the modern trend of misleading names for legislation. We all know that the USA Patriot act had nothing to do with patriotism. Patriots stand up for civil rights rather than opposing them.
The proper response is to frame debates not through outright lies like the ""Clear Skies Initiative,"" but instead through truthful names that emphasize your perspective. The ""billionaire's tax"" isn't a neutral name like the ""estate tax"" is, but at least it's not misleading like ""death tax."" The Democrats could do a lot worse than being persuasive while not abandoning truth.
Josh Gildea is a third-year law student. He can be reached at opinion@dailycardinal.com. His column runs every Wednesday in The Daily Cardinal.
