Transcripts For CSPAN3 Politics Of Income Tax 1930s-1980s 20240712

State, tax politics, and the limits of american liberalism. Professor michael more looks at tax policy and American Attitudes towards taxes from the end of the new deal, to the 1986 tax reform act. This top is warning the series with scholars who used records in the National Archives center for legislative archives for the research. The center senate hosted this amendment right of the video. Thank you for attending todays researcher top historian at the center for a legislative archive sponsor of the series. Weve had a very full program this year, showcasing some of the Significant Research that is still being, done in the house records. Todays top is the eighth of this calendar, near and we have one more november, then we will hear from Charles Stewart Political Science professor at mit, longtime friend and supporter. Of the center. Who is talk about his coauthor book electing the senate, in direct democracy before the 17th amendment. By the prince in your city press, it will be a pretty good top. I have been looking forward to hosting todays guess, molly michelmore, since i first saw her in action, at last years policy history conference, tearing a panel that included who we heard from a research top last december. And that will include carla henri, text historian, who is in the audience today. Thank you for attending carl henry. And we will hear from him soon. Molly is an associate professor of history at washington university, received her ph. D. Degree from the university of michigan. She is the author of the highly regarded packs and spend, the welfare state tax politics, and the limits of american liberalism. She will also Say Something about her current book project, which builds on tax and spend, and is wonderfully titled as a taxpayer and, Citizen Rights obligations for democracy in the modern america. We should have time for q as, please raise your hand so we can passed a microphone, and pick you up on the recording, thank you for attending. And thank you, molly. Thank you, very much. Thank you very much for inviting me down here today. Thank you all for taking the time out of your busy day, is to come here in your time to talk about history. Its a heavy lift. So i appreciate you all coming down to hear me talk, a little bit today. I wont think of course the National Archives, and all of the archivists who make it possible for historians to do what we do. So much of this historical job is to look beneath the surface, and to use unpublished archives to put together these stories of the past. Sort of we are coming out here today, because im made basically the same job every day for about two years, while i was doing research in the reigning room, upstairs. Since so its kind of surreal to come back not as a 27yearold or 25 your gadget student, but as an employee, luckily employed professor of history. It does sort of make that trip again, and the difference that feels amazing but also a lid. Today, i really want to sketch out the political history of the federal income tax as well as talk a little bit about my book, as well as the ways the National Archives sort of help me to put together the story that i tell in the book about the relationship between taxes and spending policy, mostly in the post new deal period. About 1936 to 1986, with the tax reform law of 1986. Thats basically the scope of the book. Also, i would like to then offer some thoughts about why and how taxes a move to the center of american politics and american political thought in the last four years. The role that taxes and tax politics played both in sustaining the liberal order of the post world war ii period and in animating the conservative challenge of that consensus in the last four decades. First, a little bit about myself. Where is my clicker . My interest and taxes grew out of my interest in the welfare state. I actually began my career in graduate school as a historian of the welfare state. I began with mothers pensions, were a progressive era Welfare Program that sort of provide the basis for age dependent children. The First Federal Welfare Program inaugurated in 1935 as part of the Social Security act. Even as an undergraduate, it seemed to me that historians were insufficiently attentive. That there wasnt enough attention given or thought of that taxes. After collagen before graduate school, i came down to washington d. C. And work on the hill for two years. First as a staff assistant on the senate side and then over on the house side. My boss on the house side work on the ways and Means Committee. So i had some firsthand experience working with the kinds of issues that i would later deal with in my own scholarship. So i was able to translate some of this experience. This stuff that he did not want to deal with was basically what i had to do. But i did manage to translate some of that experience, particularly sort of familiarity with legislative process, into my graduate work. Over the course of my six years in michigan, for which i spent here as well as that a college park, i began to understand that i was priority primarily a historian of the taxing state rather than the u. S. Welfare state. Although the two are, and remain connected, and its this connection that explore in the book. Over that same period, it was gratifying to see that others had recognize the importance of tax and tax politics as a field of historical inquiry. For one reason or another, historians have tended to leave taxes alone. We might be afraid of numbers. We generally try to outsource taxes and tax history to economists, two lawyers, and sometimes to political scientists. In the last ten years, there has been a sort of blossoming of historical interest in taxes we. Henry is one of the leaders in that field. Ajay has also done a great deal to bring taxes to the forefront of historical study. Tax and spend relies heavily on Archival Research, particularly i Archival Research done here the National Archives as well as the johnson and reagan president ial libraries and what was then the nixon materials project. I would like enough to be here while nixon stuff was still here. I did not have to travel in order to look at all of his records. Of the records house in this building, those of the Senate Finance and ways and Means Committee work particularly important. I also looked at the records of the joint committee on taxation as well as the joint economic committee. These records helped and putting together the history of the u. S. Income tax between 1945 and 1968. A period in which taxes did not always play a particularly visible role in National Politics. The sources also help me put together a portrait of the community and welfare tax experts who designed and implemented texan welfare policy in the two and a half decades after world war ii. Congressional sources were particularly important into chapters of the book that deal specifically with tax and welfare policy in the 19 sixties 1960s. These chapters rely heavily on the sources i found here. I also became intimately acquainted with two men, senator russell long here who was the chairman of the. Lets see, Senate Finance committee. Oh, technology. You are my friend, but also my enemy. Richard, do you know whats wrong here . Senator russell long, who was the chairman of the Senate Finance committee. He was particularly active on welfare issues. He was an opponent of the aid to families with dependent Children Program that replaced abc in 1961, as well as wilbur mills, the longtime chairman of the house ways and Means Committee. Really the sort of emperor of all tax policy in the 19 fifties and 1960 period. One of the main claims i make in the book, and i can probably do this old School Without any kind of tech support, although. I dont know, i feel a little make it appear without my powerpoint. I know is it down there . There you go. I dont know if any of you remember this, but when you were in Elementary School and the teachers could never get the video to play. Youre always like channel three, its on channel three. They are the stupidest people in the world. I just feel like you get to be a teacher you suddenly lose your ability to use technology. Even if you do it every day. Thank you very much. I hope that we dont have this particular issue again. Here is russia long talking to johnson. Here of course is wilbur mills, also talking to johnson. Again, probably also getting the famous johnson treatment. One of the main claims i make in tax and spend is while texas at periodic we played an Important Role in american politics, its not until the 1970s that they emerged as a major and perennial political issue. Although it is often assumed that americans always hated taxes and that American History can be imagined as a sort of 200 plus yet revolt against texas, for most of the 20th century, income taxes were, if not exactly popular, but a relatively accepted part of the social contract. Although conservative politicians and Interest Groups experimented with text politics in the years immediately following the second world war, it was not until the economic collapse of the 19 seventies 1970s that texas became a political issue, a part of the political issue, powerful enough to transform american politics. Party competition overtakes policy and tech politics as shown they grown even more heated after 1980, as mounting debt and budget deficits. Today, i would like to take a very brief tore through the history of the federal income tax. And again, off for a few thoughts as to how why and how taxes and tax top has now become a central feature of american politics. The United States experimented with a variety of tax systems in its 200 plus years. For most of the 18th and 19th centuries, American Finance dependent on tax revenue. On tariff revenue rather. The american constitution allow the federal government to lay and collect taxes, tariffs, to provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States. At the same time, however, article nine, section nine of article onelimited the National Governments ability to oppose any direct tax, except in proportion to the census. This limitation on the federal governments taxing power no doubt reflected the framers fear of centralized power and political factions. Equally important, however, as historian Robert Einhorn has shown, these constitutional checks on the governments power stems directly from slave holders concerns. So boulders, many of whom held key political positions in the early republic, fears that the nonslave holding majority would want to use the federal governments texan power to abolish slavery. Essentially by making it prohibitively expensive. As patrick cannery told his federal virginians in 1788, as virginia was considering whether or not to ratify the constitution, a federal government with a power to tax might someday impose a federal slave tax, hefty enough to quote, compel the Southern States to liberate their slaves. Between 1787 and 1862, American Finance dependent almost exclusively on tariffs and the National Level and property taxes at the state and local level. The American Civil War however was too expensive to pay for through these kinds of duties. To pay for the war, the union a post the nations first income tax. It texting comes over 100 dollars at a flat rate of 3 . This tax eventually affected 10 of northern households and the confederacy did not have a similar tax. This experiment with Income Taxation in the 19th century was short lived. The decade after the war, Congress Allowed the income tax to expire. Tariffs again dominated National Finance in the decades after the civil war. By the 18 eighties, a series of Economic Crises as well as the post restriction reconstruction return of the Democratic Party to National Politics weakened support for tariff based finance and propelled a Popular Movement in favor of a progressive income tax. The progressive income tax was first introduced by the peoples or populist party. The platform and representatives of this was shown in that picture. That populist Party Platform introduced in 1892 included a plan endorsing a graduated income tax to restore the government of the republic to the hands of the plane people with which class originated. Democrats soon coopted parts of the populist agenda including the progressive income tax. In 1894, Congress Approved a 2 increase in income tax on incomes over 200,000 dollars. In 1895, the Supreme Court found detects to be unconstitutional. Despite the courts ruling, however, progressive income tax remained a popular policy thanks in part to rising concerns of the unequal concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a very small elite. Party politics followed popular support. By 1908, both the gop and Democratic Party supported some kind of a National Income tax. Next year in 1909, congress, both the house and the Senate Approved the constitutional amendment giving congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes without regard to census or enumeration, thus getting around the supposed prohibition in the constitution on direct taxation. The 16th amendment was eventually approved by the states and took effect on february 25th, 1913. The first texan acted under the 60th and that 16th amendment was relatively modest, imposing only and 1 rate on personal corporate income. Only about 2 of americans were subjected even to this very minimal tax. The tax burden they go up in response to world war i. However, the world war one system only affected about 15 of American Families at its height. It did not survive. Treasury secretary andrew melon, the white house and congress agreed throughout the 1920s 1920s to roll back most of the wartime changes to the tech system. Even the Great Depression did not bring the income tax to the majority of people. Although Franklin Roosevelt adopted a populist rhetoric to justify increasing income taxes on the very wealthy to target what he called undesirable concentrations of great wealth. New deal tax policy relied heavily on both regressive consumption as well as the new payroll taxes in acted as part of the Social Security act. Excise taxes on liquor, which had the benefit of already being on the books, but having been in vance because the prohibition, became effective again in 1933 and generated huge amounts of revenue for the federal government. In 1936, for example, federal liquor texas raised 1. 5 billion dollars. That same year, the income tax raised only 1. 4 billion dollars. The federal income tax did not move to the center of american politics until the second world war. Planning for a war tax had begun as early as 1939. But of course, pearl harbor dramatically increased pressure for new federal revenues. Instead of excess profits or new general sales tax, congress and the administration agreed to keep the personal income tax at the center of American Finance. The new law lowered the personal exemption level and so transformed the income tax from a class tax, which had been paid by only a very small minority of very wealthy taxpayers, to a mass tax that affected the middle and even working classes. Between 1939 and 1945, a number of individual taxpayers crew from 3. 9 million to 42. 6 million. Over that same period, income Tax Collections group from only 2. 2 billion to 35. 1 billion. The 1942 law does transformed millions of americans almost overnight into taxpayers. To sell this new tax system, we have examples of this here, the federal government explicitly tied taxpaying to wartime patriotism. The campaign to convince americans to pay their taxes to beat the axis enlisted the help of such pop culture luminaries as urban burgling, who wrote the song i paid my income tax today. Every time i played in class, it gets into my head for the rest of the day. Irving berlin, danny kaye, roy rogers, and even donald duck, who starred in two short films produced by the Wall Disney Company for the department of the treasury. When these films, the new spirit of 43, donald de pays his taxes. Its actually really interesting. You can find them on youtube fairly easily. The answer a lot of questions that you might have about donald duck. For example, he is an actor if people did not know that. It does not explain why he does not wear pants. But it does explain what his job is and explains his relationship to you, do and louis. He described them as dependence on his tax form. Although i believe that they are just his snapshots. This film and Public Campaign in general, we tend to extra laboratories of the taxpayers citizens. The campaign was remarkably successful in selling these no income tax system. Public opinion polls indicate that americans felt their taxes were fair, and that their tax dollars were helpful with the war effort. At this time, unlike after world war i, the warm times tax survived. After the return to peace. The taxes of course were not universally popular. In the late 1940s the gop did try to use tax politics to recapture congress, as well as the white house. Party leaders hoped to bring this to, appeal and members emerging from the middle class. Those women, quote, owned things inspired to own things. Having to pay for the new deal and other programs that they fall did not directly affect them. Beside the gop claims that the tax werent reflective of the middle class, however, most of the pressure from tax relief was not from ordinary voters brother from organized business, mobilize quickly after the war. Throwback with the viewed as onerous and on care excess province and corporate decoration. With his interest in antitax is particularly clear that the failed moving to amend the constitution and have a top grade at 25 . Although supporters of the tax limitation members claim that there is a spontaneous, incomplete, enjoy voluntary grass movement. The campaign was paid for some of the largest corporations including the republic steals, texas boyle, as well as other interest. This tax limitation campaign failed, but not before it introduced significant changes to the way people talked about and thought about taxes. And their relationship to these. It was during this campaign that business lobbies succeeding in rainy fining americans as tax cuts. A practiced of politicians have followed ever since. And we can see this in the way politicians talk about this in the 1960s, they talk about this is a campaign transform tax years into taxpayers. And thats not a kind of language that you see much before this storm. The leaders of the campaign they have failed in their quest to amend the constitution for the taxes. But in the process they have, as someone pointed out, pioneered much of the anti tax rhetoric that will come later in the politics of the dawn of the 24 century. It is important to note however that this rhetoric of people totally worked in public. Voters were happy to support tax cuts if you ask them but they generally didnt demand, it for much of the early Voting Period the seemed really interesting tax cuts. Indeed one of the largest tax cuts was in 1964, which was basically an inside their belt kind of production. The law stands from the Kennedy Administration is concerned the United States economy had underperformed the 19 fifties. Kennedy and his advisers working closely with a group of tax experts arranged around mills in the Minsk Committee, hoped to use corporate and individual rights to expand american productive capacity at a rate that shows the world with vigor in vitality of a free economy. Every time i want to do a kennedy accent with the word figure, but i try not to. Public interest in the tax code was lukewarm, at best. The Kennedy Administration actually had to go out and get up public support for this across the board. According to the new york times, the taxpayers were eagerly awaiting more money in the pockets. The wall street journal lamented the tax had fever, they had predicted and failed to realize. According to one candidate administration inside, or the white house had to do more to convince people that something is good for the country. The creation of two groups a business in the Citizens Committee protector vision did a little too convinced of Public Opinion for prompt congressional action for the tax imposed. To the big question is what changes . With changes particular between 1964 1969 . When taxpayers inundated the white house and congress with demands for tax reductions. According to one observer, student protests against the vietnam war. How did tax politics move to the center of National Political agenda . How did any issue that once had been the province of a relatively small, Insular Group of tax experts become the stuff of National Campaign . First, the post war boom ended. By 1968, inflation was rising, productivity was flagging, wages were staggering, and employment was not sticking. Up all of these trends were worsening. These economic changes particularly inflation in the rising, sensitized taxpayers to the size of their own stokes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, scramble taxpayers across the country clouded new organizations to protect their rights and their interests. These new tax goretex payer groups were clearly inspired by groups in the 1960s. And it made a show, ill show you in a moment, but many tax players were actually organized by civil rights and Welfare Rights Movement of the 1960s. Congressional reform to have an Important Role to play. Four years tax english asian, ways and means deliberations were closed, public tax bills were closed in the house was closed. They didnt permit any amendments. The committees control over the tax agenda had augmented the power of a small group of experts, and it yielded a tax policy. Of course, taxing america does a great job at talking about this period, in American History. Particularly in the role Minsk Committee played. In the particular way in which america reacted. Congressional form, designed with the transparency and accountability, in combination with the very public fall from grace, opened the door for increased Public Participation in tax policy. Perhaps most important, however, politicization of tax policy. With the collapse of the democratic coalition, after Hubert Humphrey defeat that year, a widely interpreted as the deviation of the free states society. After that defeat, after the strategist of the secrets both on left in the right, sought out ways to have a political bible or when you order. While leading democrats look for ways to reinvent barney, and offer a coherent post Great Society agenda, gop leaders sought out ways to consolidate their build off the partys recent accessible to the white house in the middle classes. Something Richard Nixon famously called the silent majority. They held out hope for both the left and right, he had not in this post 16th period. And as you can see from this chart, they became increasingly important to both Party Platforms after between 1960 and 1980. Going up from sort of republican platform here in 1960, after 144 taxation comes up in 1980. Ill bet you can see a general increase in the platforms of both parties from the disparity. For democrats, liberals, and progressives, tax politics offered a way for the party to appeal to the economic interests of the White Working Class without abandoning the partisan social new immigration liberalism. Tax policy takes may lead and hope to gather the quote in reference, for the black in our working and middle classes by fomenting a populist revolt against those classes in institutions which besides an illegitimate bell of wealth. And bower. The first rational any state could vote against taxes in early 1969, and one officials in the outgoing Johnson Administration published a list of some 200 tax million, who would use loopholes to reduce or even to eliminate the federal tax. The treasury report helped mobilize taxpayers already sensitive, and the amount of taxes they were paid, they had been passed in vietnam, for the year before. They had a mix in the administration, they had only been in the white house for less in a month when the officers went fanned, with letters demanding that their taxes for their just be eliminated. And ordinary tax payers varied. This campaign was remarkably effective. By the end of 1969 congress had approved a significant tax reform package, despite nixons repeated veto threats. This victory provided democratic liberals with an unexpected victory in an otherwise room political season. I look into the future democratic strategists hope that tax fairness might provide the party with the wage to win back the loyalties of the white working hand in middle classes. Capitol hill democrats heralded the bill as a triumph in the middle america. And those men and women who work out trying to have a payment on the home and leave a family of children had for too long been working on the chin. The passage of this 1969 law did not quiet taxpayer anger. To the contrary, in a yearlong campaign actually in large disco for the grassroots taxpayers, by bringing the attention of newly formed tax organizations to the issue of fairness in the federal tax cut. The initial groups had initially focused on local taxes. Hugely property taxes. But after 1960s nine, they had new attention given to federal tax code for the income tax. Tax groups continue to attract numbers in early 19 seventies, with the early reports in 1971 more than 2 million taxes and 2300 tax renovations. These tax protectors protesters defied this categorization. s they seem to be on the popular image in the backlash, white working and middle class homeowners who blamed the social policies and the rising tax bills. But others to find this in arkansas, in california, in massachusetts, they bell fair whites and civil Rights Movement these urination expertise to mobilize low income taxpayers. And they direct public attention to corporate and wealthy tax avoiders. This agenda viewed even more central to the reigns of democratic reconstruction, in a way for liberal george tried to defeat in 1972. And following 1973, another senator who lost its job in the election of 1972, an oklahoma liberal, announced plans to reattach tax cut reforms. And reforming the reform laws getting the ridge off welfare. They call this populist action, and plunder national tax action day for april 16th, 1973. To filing deadline for their taxes. The groups public presentation, as you can see here, deliberately avoided most of the areas of this cultural politics in favor of an economic populism arrayed against attacks privileges of the rich. National publicity for the tax day, and its a page ticket out in the new york times, featured a white middle aged a woman named karen miller, who worked outside her home. She was there because of her homes struggles with the tax. It was not alone among the liberal strategist to look for a new line of congressional majority. In 1973, no law for a foreign leader founded a new organization known as a movement for Economic Justice. Progressives, reilly insisted, must use a tax code as a grassroots organization. As we as a means to bring together silent majority and the poor minorities around basic Economic Security issues. Inequality in the tax code widely suggested people of all interest in backgrounds, movement that aim to challenge and remove these in abilities, would bring together the elderly, black people, veterans, hospital workers, household, police, womens, farmworkers, mineworkers, take your parents, unemployed workers, chicano, slacks, puerto ricans, and black americans. Progressive tax reformers voted in public conservative critique of welfare to delegitimized subsidies for corporations and for the wealthy. And thats also its happening here, in this flyer distributed by the movement for Economic Justice, which i found in the records of the Wisconsin Historical society, with a great collection of social justice movement. This image mobilizes the image of the welfare clean, including the fancy, car the clothing, as well as the cigarette. But it turns that image against the dutch family, henry at a dodge. While this organization concentrated to on the grassroots, the national off his prepared press releases, liars, as well as other organizational tools, that could be used to address local needs. The movement for Economic Justice also focused on helping out local tax payers, or local tax groups, to help with their constituents directly. By setting up these tax claims. In these tax clinics, was to offer real help, as a way to get them interested in vested in tax reforms. The movement for Economic Justice helped set up at least 125 tax clinics free, across the country, and these tax clinics not only helped the people to do their returns. But also aim to demonstrate how individuals face problems, who are actually symptomatic of an unjust system. So heres a real good example of that axiom of feminist and seventies politics. The personal is political. The group also worked closely with state and local organizations to plan but they call local tax happenings. Directed against corporations reported from axes. And to provide local routes with information about how the injustice was in the current tech system, about injustices the current tax system, how to get a free tax, how to get involved in legislative battles over tax reform. New foreign Economic Justice, and other progressive dogs organizations, including ralph baders tech support research group. They devoted much of their time to setting up train local teens, to mobilize quickly and efficiently, with maximum pressure on easing congressman. Despite the high hopes, and initial successes, however, progressive efforts to channel and controlled tax player and anger proved futile. Continued deterioration of the National Economy made it difficult, if not impossible, progressive to use tax politics to underwrite the new progressive majority. Inflation had pushed many middle income taxpayers into higher marginal tax brackets across the brackets. This transformed earlier calls for tax reform into strident demands for tax reductions. Moreover, as it turned out, tax reform itself was a double edged sword. Progressives were eager to point out the loopholes in the code that benefited wealthy taxpayers as well as corporations. But they are less eager to point out those socalled loopholes in the code that provided material assistance to members of the senate majority. Tax breaks for homeownership, for Employer Provided Health care, for starting a business, and in some cases, even for getting married. These forms of special tax incentives have become a central feature of the tax code. It provided the federal government would revenue. It was an active force in promoting or discouraging certain behaviors for the use of tax deductions, credits and special rights. Formerly known as tax expenditures to stress their functional equivalent to direct expenditures, these provisions in the code word increasingly important part of the american Economic Security system. Particularly for members of the middle class. Although many middle and working class taxpayers benefited from these kind of preferences, if you saw themselves as recipients of any kind of federal this was not an accident. You just had to kind of get through the ways and means finance committees. But also because they fit more easily with american policymakers longstanding preference policies that privileged the market and minimized direct government spending. The result of the sleight of hand was that beneficiaries of this tech spending were far more likely to receive themselves as victims of the tax code then as beneficiaries of the tax and spend liberal state. Policymakers were so successful in building what a political scientist has called the welfare state, that most beneficiaries dont even know it exists. In the end, it was the right that won the tax revolt. Responding to the reintroduction of tax politics during the 1972 democratic primary. A gop strategist developed and deployed a sweat persuasive political story that blamed rising tax burdens almost exclusively on irresponsible and wasteful democratic spending programs. By the end of the 1970s, conservatives had successfully used their attacks on the tax code entered it on the stake itself. We have a few examples of the archives. This might be of interest for you. Notes from a meeting with president nixon. Here they are talking about the that and taking it off the table because they do not want to be seen as advocating any kind of a tax increase. Pat buchanan, not surprisingly, was particularly forward in advocating the politicize asian of tax politics in the 19 seventies 1970s, and particularly in developing a political rhetoric which pitted the interest of taxpayers against those of tax leaders. Namely welfare recipients who, by the early 1970s, had become a sort of despised and racialized group. So the politics of taxation in the early 1970s takes on a racial dynamic that is sort of reinforced in this kind of discourse. This can native competition between taxpayers and tax eaters has animated conservative politics for decades. It even spawned a novelty board game. Here is sort of an aside and a good example of the serendipity of historical research. I did not go looking for this game. I did not know this game existed. But the year i was hired, another member of my department, a noted pack rat named Jefferson Davis fudge the third, which gave you a sense of how old he was, was retiring. He had generations of students give him things and this was one of the things that one of the students had given him as a sort of parting gift i suppose in 1980. He found this game while he was cleaning out his office and he gave it to me. I introduced in 1980, public assistance, why work for a living when you can play this great welfare game, translated the rage, alienation and frustration of the silent majority into a board game. Modeled after monopoly, the rules of the game are pretty simple. Players rolled a set of nice and moved according to lee accra along one of two tracks. The able bodied welfare recipients promenade on the one hand and the working persons root on the other. Reflecting the games creators belief that the federal government exploited hard working taxpayers like themselves, other rules made it almost impossible for a working person to win. You probably cannot see what all of these squares say, but they are basically what you would imagine. On the able bodied welfare recipients promenade, you can go to the track, you can go to a prostitute, you can have illegitimate children. The illegitimate children square it comes up a lot and you get money every time you have illegitimate children. Equally important i think is the structure of the game. It insisted on a kind of zero some competition between text leaders and taxpayers. Not only did welfare recipients and workers travel along along different paths, its rules made clear that workers tax burdens were caused by the bad behavior of both welfare recipients and their government enablers. Anytime a player on the welfare promenade landed on have an illegitimate child square, each player in the working persons root had to pay that player 50 dollars out of his or her own pocket. At the end, if you are on the working persons rut and end up with money, it is then taxed away at about 40 i believe. Its basically impossible to win if you get stuck on the working persons rock. Here are some examples of the kinds of things, the kind of situations that might come up over the course of your play in the welfare game. Working persons burden, you are up for a high paying promotion, but a government affirmative action rules require the disadvantaged minority, homosexual buddhist female be promoted over you. Lose 400 dollars. Congratulations, you are very young grandparent. Your eldest illegitimate child has that illegitimate child of her own. Collect 200 dollars. These are not extreme examples of the kind of situation that you come across win and if you get to play the welfare game. What is interesting is i think this game wasnt really an outlier. It captured and represented a kind of conventional wisdom about the relationship between taxes, welfare and the liberal state. The tax revolt by 1980 and decisively turned to the right. That is kind of where tax and spend ends. It ends with the reagan revolution. It ends with Ronald Reagans election in 1980. It talks a bit about tax reform in 1986, but not that much. Then in the epilogue, i talk a little bit about the stalemate and contemporary politics over the issue of taxation. My next project sort of grows out of parts of tax and spend. Questions that came up, but i was unable to answer within the scope of the book. It also comes at least in part, and i owe my experience on the hill, the title of the book most my experience on the hill. Because every time, you know, i was a low level staffer and i wrote a lot of letters and answered a lot of calls. Anytime anyone called for anything, it did not matter what it was, they could be a sort of rightwing guy calling for Border Security or they could be groups of progressive nuns wanting us to close the school of the americas. They would always preface their demands with, as a taxpayer and a citizen, i demand that you do x. Right . It seems to me it was a really interesting way of raising a relationship to the state. What is it about american politics . What is it about the American Experience that makes that textured identity so salient . And is this something that unique to the United States . Is this something that is unique to the last four decades . Where does this come from . So that is kind of what i am looking at in my next book. It is tentatively titled, as a taxpayer and a citizen. Tony morrison has recently argued that this kind of taxpayer citizenship is ultimately a cramped one because it requires you to essentially buying in. It requires you to have some skin in the game in some ways. She was quoted in a recent interview of kind of lamenting this transformation of american citizenship into a identity that was solely associated with taxpaying citizenship. I think theres something to be said for this. But my Research Agenda kind of wants to look at the ways in which the taxpayer identity has been used to push back against a kind of cramped definition of citizenship. It looks at the ways which in which marginalized groups are sometimes able to claim their taxpayer identity in order to push open the boundaries of american citizenship. So this book focus on how various groups, including women, african americans, property owners, pacifists, anti war activists, immigrants and anti immigrant anti immigration activists. The port, game in and women, have used both their political and legal identities as taxpayers to affect policy changes and to expand or to defend existing definitions of citizenship. Although the defense of taxpayers rights is almost always associated with contemporary america with the political right, historically, progressives as well as conservatives have been able to mobilize this kind of a language. Like tax and spend, we see text politics as under the key to understanding 20th century political america. Where my first book focus solely on elite policy makers, this new project will include grassroots mobilization as well as national lawmakers. It will look at political as well as legal defenses of taxpayers rights. And hopefully, it will spend the entire 20th century. The first piece of this new project ive been working on, and is currently under review at the journal womens history, is on the politics of so called marriage tax penalty. It becomes a big issue in the 1970s it looks at how gender, the family in texas come back to play a radical Critical Role in the realignment of american politics in the 1970s. I would be happy to answer any questions about that in the queue and a. I think i will stop there. I will thank you very much for your attention and coming up to this. And again, if you have any questions my husband had those made for me for christmas two years ago. Very difficult, apparently, to get knuckle distress anywhere. As it turns out, they are illegal. So he had to have these mylar ones made in hong kong via at sea. You can get everything you want on a seat. Thank you very much for coming up. I would love to take any questions that you know have. I appreciate your attention. [applause] questions . It would also be great to know who everybody is so i know i am talking to. High, that was a fantastic top. Thank you so much. My name is kate and i am a historian with the Senate Historical office. Great. I have a couple of questions for you. One of them is just that statistic you give about world war ii, the number of taxpayers and how it dramatically increases. Do you what is the percentage there . You give a number of like a 42 million taxpayers, whats the percentage of the working american . Right. These i want to say that about 60 of americans owed some kind of federal tax in 1945. About 75 had to file. So the connection then between the state becomes all the most much closer. Even if you do not have to pay anything, you still have to go through the motions of filling out this form. And so in terms of kind of defining or redefining the relationship between state and citizen, obviously this is a critical moment in that redefinition because here people are literally sort of filling out this form and sending into the government. Seeing themselves as taxpayers for the first time. The argument, i think, that a lot of tax dollars make is that the income tax feels like a tax in ways that consumption taxes dont always feel like taxes. They increase tax consciousness. So a lot of people, there was a poll taken in 1939, even though a lot of people were paying taxes on liquor, basically, they did not think of themselves as taxpayers. But after 1945, they do think of themselves more often as taxpayers. May i ask one more quick one . This image of the welfare queen, i love this lets redefine it and its a person who is wealthy and also benefiting from these types of breaks. Its interesting to the gender component of this. Why a woman . Why is it always a woman . Is that anything that you unpack in this book or that you plan to look at any further . Yeah, it is one of the things that i dont deal with gender a lot in the book. But obviously, the politics of welfare are a deeply gendered politics. The politics of taxation as well are gendered, although in a different way. And i think taxpayers have traditionally, i mean, its traditionally been a sort of male prerogative. But clearly, what they are doing here is translating this gendered image of a welfare queen. Women traditionally have been assumed to be naturally dependent. What was interesting about the creation of the welfare queen was that she was unnaturally dependent. She was not dependent on the right thing. Youre supposed to be dependent on your husband. Youre supposed to be dependent on your