Parties Are More ConsequentiAl than Clever Framing: Estate Tax Edition

​Originally published in the Mischiefs of Faction blog.

By Jonathan M. Ladd

​At a research seminar I attended several weeks ago, a smart and politically informed economist premised his question by saying: "We know how effective framing can be on policy. Calling the estate tax the death tax turned most people against it and led to its temporary repeal..." A few days after this, I was listening to a New Yorker's "Political Scene" podcast, where they were discussing income inequality, and heard longtime staff writer John Cassidy assert:

"The forces on the right, not just the rich, have done a much better job over the last 20 or 30 years of boiling down their message into popular slogans. Like the 'death tax' was, you know, a work of genius whoever came up with that phrase. Inheritance taxes are now very unpopular with people who have absolutely no chance whatsoever of ever having to pay them or knowing anybody who has to pay them. The entire policy is designed for a very small minority of very wealthy people. But it has the support of a lot of middle income people. The left or the progressive wing of politics... just hasn't done a very good job of counteracting the story told on the right, which they stick with through thick and thin."

These examples illustrate again for me how powerful most elite political observers in the United States believe framing to be. It is related to the reverence with which the journalists and politicians sometimes hold political message-makers like Karl Rove and Mark Penn. It also reminds me of the attention showered on George Lakoff in 2004 when he published Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate - The Essential Guide for Progressives. That book argued that Republicans were winning elections because of superior framing, including phrases like "tax relief," "death tax" and "greedy trial lawyers" and that more liberal-friendly frames, like "poison-free communities," "taxation is... your membership fee in America," and "public protection attorneys," were essential to resurrecting the Democrats' electoral fortunes.

This way of thinking about politics is tempting for several reasons. It makes following day-to-day politics more exciting, because it implies that outcomes are determined by a skill contest between political professionals. The team with the most clever strategists will conjure up the best frames and win the day. In addition, this is a comforting perspective for coalitions that are losing, because it tells them that are only losing because of tactical mistakes. Victory can be theirs again if only inspiration hits them with just the right slogans to package their existing policies.

Finally, this is a great example of the "third-person effect:" the tendency of people to think a persuasive message will have a bigger effect on others than it has on themselves. Whatever side they take on the issue, I know of no politically informed person who thinks her own opinion has been changed by the "death tax" framing. Yet a large number seem to believe this frame has a huge effect on others.

Framing effects, while real, are not as powerful and omnipresent as people sometimes imagine. In experiments, framing in news reports and survey questions can change opinions. But while framing can change mass opinion on an issue, it often doesn't in practice. The reason is that framing effects are much more likely to occur if only one type of frame is salient. If people are exposed to multiple frames, or if they are aware of other ways of looking at the issue from past news coverage or personal experience, frames are much less influential. The presence of competing frames is likely one reason that media effects tend to be larger in the lab than in the real world.

What about the estate tax? It seems like a case where framing effects are unusually likely. In the early 2000s, opponents started labeling this tax on inherited wealth the "death tax." They claimed it was unjust double taxation because the money had (they claimed) already been taxed when it was income. Some people came up with even cleverer slogans like "no taxation without respiration." Supporters never seemed as good at disseminating pro-estate tax frames.

But even on this issue, the evidence suggests framing wasn't very important. The 2002 American National Election Study included an experiment where people were randomly assigned to be asked about the "death tax" or the "estate tax" and found no significant difference in opinions. It was broadly unpopular with both wordings. Question wording experiments in polls by a variety of other organizations found similar null results.

When Larry Bartels looked at the history of estate tax (see chapter 7), he found no evidence it was popular at any time since its adoption in 1916. Republicans have tried to repeal it whenever they had unified control of government, and in each instance they felt they had popular sentiment behind them. This started in the mid-1920s, when President Calvin Coolidge urged repeal. At that time, the estate tax was cut, and members of Congress perceived strong public pressure for complete repeal. Repeal was averted, not because the votes weren't there in Congress, but only because the House Ways and Means Committee chairman took it out of the bill in conference committee. After that, it was safe from repeal for many decades because from 1932 to 2001, Republicans only held unified government control for a small two year window in 1953-5, when they held a slim 1-vote majority in the Senate and a 10-seat majority in the House. When Republicans took the House in 1994, many in the party immediately pushed for repeal. And when they achieved unified control in 2001, they passed it.

The estate tax didn't persist because it was popular, but because the Democratic Party had an ideological commitment to it. Democrats enacted it in 1916 when they held unified control of Congress and the presidency, then either kept repeal off the agenda or otherwise blocked it for many decades. As soon as Republicans got a chance, they repealed it. Then, when the repeal was set to expire in 2010, a weak version of the tax was preserved because Democrats again had leverage in the lawmaking process.

So upon closer examination, the estate tax isn't a case of clever framing. The key to understanding this policy is not to look at public opinion at all (because the public seems to have always been skeptical of this tax), but to look at the ideological coalitions of the parties. While memorable, all those ingenious anti-estate tax frames were not driving policy change.