Noam Neusner, the Federations, and taxes

Writing in the Baltimore Jewish Times, Noam Neusner, who was a top domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush, takes Jewish service groups to task for seeking to keep entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid from being restructured.

I wrote about this last week. The posture of the groups essentially lines them up with Democrats on this issue.

Noam doesn’t begrudge the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the federations system for wanting to preserve entitlements; his argument is that they may do so, but not maintain the high moral ground:

You cannot fault Jewish charities — or any charities — for acting rationally and in their best interests.

But that doesn’t mean that Jewish organizations can justify their support for bigger government and therefore higher tax rates with jeremiads inveighing against the so-called immorality of a, say, 15 percent cut in the size of a Pell Grant scholarship. We are regularly treated to such histrionics these days.

Such invocations would be taken more seriously if charities themselves paid taxes on their property and endowment gains, for example. They would be more believable if charities did not house themselves in fancy office buildings and pay their executives generous salaries. Their arguments would carry some credibility if charities accepted gifts without returning anything of value — such as named buildings — to the donor.

None of this is the case, however. Jewish charities cleverly play on both the egos and the financial incentives of their donors. They are no dummies. But they are no innocents, either. And if there is a moral high ground in this matter, they have no right to stand on it.

Now let me nuance this a little: The JCPA and** The federations umbrella, the Jewish Federations of North America, takes great care not to address whether taxes should be raised, primarily because the donor base is split on the issue. I had written about attitudes on taxes — the Reform movement and the Religious Action Center unabashedly say tax increases should be an option — but it was cut for space reasons.

So is Noam unfair when he says the groups would be more credible if they paid taxes?

Not really: He offers the preemptive argument that preserving entitlements necessitates tax increases:

Reflexive support for our current government programs — and their future growth — can mean only one thing: Higher taxes. Federations and other Jewish organizations which support big government are by definition supporting bigger taxes or economic ruin.

I first caught Noam’s piece when it was tweeted by the Republican Jewish Coalition. I responded with a flippant tweet of my own, which brought into the discussion William Daroff, the Washington director of JFNA — and a former top staffer for the RJC.

In two tweets, William then offered a counter-argument: Cutting taxes is not inconsistent with greater revenue, if one buys into supply side theories, which after all, originated with the conservative Reagan administration:

Since when do conservatives think that raising taxes results in more govt revenue? #SupplySideRIP?

Noam says since we are for spending, we must be for tax hikes; real conservatives believe tax hikes = less $ for spending

In the same Twitter exchange, the RJC offered two National Review pieces, one serious, one perhaps a little less so.

The first, more serious one, from last week, posits that tax cuts do not spur revenue pay for themselves*, and that conservatives should stop arguing that they do.

The second piece, from 1989, argues that:

All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.

I’m thinking this is less a substantive argument than an affectionate tweak of Williiam, who likes to call himself "post-partisan."

*Thanks to RJC for pointing out this important distinction.

**Adam Kredo of the Washington Jewish Week reminds me of what I had written in the past — the JCPA has opposed tax cuts.