When last seen on the American political scene in 1995, Bob Packwood was forced to resign from the U.S. Senate because of charges of sexual harassment, assault and abuse–charges he continued to deny even though the evidence was pretty compelling (for those of you with political recall, you might remember the endless struggle over his personal diaries, which, it turned out, he had edited to remove references to his, eh, sexual dalliances). Today, he’s back–I hadn’t heard a peep from him in all that time (have you?). In The New York Times, Packwood compounds a life of denial and obfuscation, this time putting his lack of candor towards the question of taxes.

   His op-ed addresses the question of government spending. Here’s the key argument:

Let’s assume, based on historical patterns and President Obama’s suggested spending, that at some point, the spending of all governments in the United States, federal and local, could add up to 40 percent of G.D.P. Mr. Obama proposes to increase the tax rate on income over $250,000 to 39.6 percent. The billions of dollars a year raised by the higher rate won’t begin to cover the trillion or so a year in increased government spending. Nor would current state and local taxes support their share of that spending. Therefore taxes would have to be raised on Americans making less than $250,000.

   Sheer nonsense. You see, Packwood, a man skilled at misdirection, is framing the entire argument around tax rates that top out at 39.6–as if this is a big burden to the richest in our society. Of course, the natural progression in his argument is that, oh god, at those rates of spending the taxes will just have to go up on the rest of the public.

   Which is just phony. Even if you think the long-term spending as a percent of GDP is too high (which I don’t as long as that spending is made for long-term investments, as the president is mostly aiming to do), I have argued for some time that there is plenty of money to be raised by asking the people who do very well to pay their fair share in the dues that we need to run a decent society. If we raise the top income tax rates to 40 percent and 45 percent (the top rate is now 35 percent for married taxable income above $351,000), add a top rate of 50 percent for those people with taxable income higher than $1 million and—this is crucial—tax investment income as ordinary income (the proposal also assumes that Congress will fix the Alternative Minimum Tax, which costs the Treasury money), you realize an additional $211 billion in net revenues, with 91 percent of those revenues coming from the richest one percent of Americans (and, the above model should be adjusted to eliminate tax reductions for the higher income earners). That is just a fact.

  I’d throw in another thing that can raise another $150 billion a year: a very tiny "thank you for playing" fee on Wall Street stock transactions. Tiny means 0.25 percent. Something so miniscule that the small investor wouldn’t even notice it. The lion’s share of the income would come from the big traders and speculators who move millions of shares a day in an attempt to jump on any gyration in the market.

  That totals about $350 billion.

  I suspect Packwood is trying to fill some void in the "Just say no" party, and rehabilitate himself, by throwing out some Republican red meat about those god awful deficits. But, his argument is no more truthful than his defense about his personal behavior.