Politicians think we’re stupid

OPINION:

A friend has contended for several years that politicians think we are stupid. I have routinely resisted that, but recent events are causing me to reassess my resistance.

The proximate cause of the rethink was Vice President Kamala Harris’ recent trip to the border, where she did her level best to try to convince the American people that she had nothing to do with the dissolution of the southern border despite being President Biden’s border czar charged with solving the immediate problem as well as addressing the underlying causes of illegal immigration. So far, she has managed to avoid the fact that on her watch, 10 million people have entered the nation illegally.

Nor has she had any compunction about pitching the idea that former President Donald Trump, by opposing legislation that would have allowed “only” 2 million more illegal entrants to our nation each year, was somehow the real problem concerning our lack of a southern border.

For Ms. Harris, obscuring the facts about her record on border security is consistent with her attempts to gaslight the voters about many of her previous stances. She has been for racial reparations. Raising taxes. Prohibiting fracking. Establishing electric vehicle mandates. Passing the Green New Deal. Cutting funding to police departments. Confiscating guns. Yet we are told — and are supposed to believe — that none of these previous beliefs is operational.

It’s not just the Democrats. Recently, in the pages of this newspaper, Sen. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican (although, to be fair, he supported Michael Dukakis for president in 1988, and he donated to Paul Tsongas), tried to sell us a border tax on carbon dioxide, which is really a border tax on energy. He asserted that such a tax — which would be paid by American companies and American consumers — would somehow hurt China.

Let me help. The senator’s proposed tax would be imposed on goods coming into the country from other countries. The tax would be based on the difference between how much carbon dioxide was emitted in the production of the goods in question elsewhere versus how much carbon dioxide would have been emitted if the goods had been made here in the United States.

The referees of this complicated proposal? Federal bureaucrats, of course.

Mr. Cassidy is hoping you overlook two things. First, basing a tax on the different levels of carbon dioxide emitted in the manufacturing of products is the same thing as imposing a tax on energy. The senator knows this and knows that energy taxes are wildly unpopular (not even the Biden administration has proposed one). He has created this Rube Goldberg machine to hide the fact that, at root, he wants to impose an energy tax on Americans.

Second, here’s how border taxes work: The importing entity, in this case, the American company, pays the tax. Then the company passes that cost along to the consumer, which, in this case, is you. Again, Mr. Cassidy hopes you won’t notice that his energy tax will ultimately be imposed on American consumers.

Sometimes hoping that voters are clueless is bipartisan. As Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, has pointed out, we go through the same drama every year — a continuing resolution in late September (just barely and heroically avoiding a shutdown), followed by omnibus legislation in December that hides all kinds of mayhem, including inevitable increases in spending, irrespective of our debt and deficit.

And each year, just about all members of Congress go along quietly and hope that voters won’t figure out that deficit spending — irrespective of the purpose — undermines the financial integrity of the United States and will eventually drive us into a financial ditch.

Maybe the politicians are right.

• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.