Politics & Power Quote by Barney Frank

Frank’s line is a two-part counterpunch to a durable Republican story: that taxing the rich is economically suicidal. He doesn’t argue in abstractions about “fairness” or “shared sacrifice.” He argues like a legislator who’s spent years watching numbers get weaponized. First, he frames the Clinton-era hike as “primarily on upper-income people,” pre-empting the middle-class backlash machine that treats any tax talk as an assault on ordinary voters. Then he drops the pivot: it didn’t just make the code “more nearly progressive,” it “preceded” an economic boom.

That verb matters. “Preceded” is cautious enough to dodge the pure causation trap while still inviting the reader to connect the dots. Frank’s intent is rhetorical jujitsu: he uses the opposition’s preferred metric (growth, productivity) to defend a policy they condemn on principle. The subtext is almost scolding: you can’t keep pretending the 1990s didn’t happen just because it complicates your ideology.

Context-wise, this is aimed at a post-1990s, post-supply-side environment where Democrats are routinely accused of being anti-business. Frank reclaims the era as evidence that progressive taxation and prosperity can coexist, and he does it with a quiet but pointed implication about collective memory: policy debates aren’t just about economics, they’re about which historical facts get to count.