by
Sam Pizzigati
Against a Congress where zealously rich people-friendly conservatives hold the upper hand, how much can a President of the United States committed to greater equality realistically hope to accomplish?
The answer from today?s White House: not much. Advocacy for equality has to take a backseat, Obama administration insiders insist, once fanatical friends of the fortunate in Congress recklessly put at risk our nation?s full faith and credit.
But history offers another alternative. Back in 1943, halfway through World War II, a President of the United States confronted a debt ceiling crisis eerily similar to our own. That President, Franklin Roosevelt, faced a congressional opposition to inconveniencing the rich ? with higher taxes ? every bit as rabid as ours.
FDR?s choice, in the face of this opposition? He doubled down on equality.
Roosevelt?s debt ceiling battle actually began in the months right after Pearl Harbor. The nation needed dollars ? and lots of them ? to wage and win the new war. FDR wanted those dollars raised as equitably as possible.
That would require, FDR and his New Dealers believed, a steeply graduated income tax, with tax rates on income in the top income brackets much higher than rates on income in the bottom brackets.
How high should the top rates go? All the way, FDR proposed, to 100 percent. At a time of ?grave national danger,? the President told Congress in April 1942, ?no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year,? an income just shy of $350,000 in today?s dollars.
The year before, gun executive Carl Swebilius had pulled in $243,204 after taxes, the equivalent of over $3.7 million today. Steel exec Eugene Grace had grabbed $522,537, over $8 million today, in 1941 salary. But conservatives in Congress looked the other way. They never gave FDR?s plan any love.
Four months later, Roosevelt would try again. In his Labor Day message, FDR repeated his $25,000 ?supertax? income cap call. Again Congress ignored him.
FDR would not back down. In early October, the President flexed his authority under the newly enacted Emergency Price Control Act and issued an executive order that limited top corporate salaries to $25,000 after taxes, a move, he pronounced, needed ?to correct gross inequities and to provide for greater equality in contributing to the war effort.?
Obama is no FDR.
