Word: taxed
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...weeks ago, Senator Joe Biden had a perfect little epiphany: Why not pay for the $87 billion that's needed for Iraq by asking the wealthiest 1% of Americans to forgo their Bush tax breaks for just a year--2010? The Bush breaks, after all, would be worth $89 billion that year. "I haven't found one single wealthy American" who wouldn't be willing to do that, Biden told Fox News. The idea has been gaining steam among his fellow Democrats in the Senate and may be introduced in the House by Congressman Tom Lantos of California. It probably...
General Wesley Clark quickly found his way there too. In his first official policy pronouncement last week, Clark proposed a two-year, $100 billion job-creation program--funded by rescinding the first two years of Bush's tax cuts for the top 2%, which will cost an estimated $112 billion. Indeed, every Democrat running for President has proposed something similar. Normally, this sort of thing is risky: Republicans can be counted on to squeal about "class warfare" whenever Democrats complain about tax cuts for the rich. But times are tough, Iraq's a mess, the looming deficits are enormous...
...that is undoubtedly what Clinton would do now if he were George Bush: he would totally bollix the Democrats by delaying, or scrapping, his tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. He would give an Oval Office speech, profess his continuing belief in the mystical power of tax cuts--but cite the national emergency in Iraq and the jobless recovery at home. He might even lift General Clark's deft gambit (which Clark lifted from John Edwards): a $40 billion jobs program disguised as a homeland-security program that would include reinforcing bridges and tunnels against terrorist attack and enlarging...
...doesn't Bush take the plunge on taxes? A matter of honor, say those familiar with the President's thinking--who also acknowledge that if he did rescind some of the tax cuts, it would raise Bush's poll ratings, gut the opposition and perhaps even guarantee his re-election. But Bush won't do it, I am told, because it would undermine all the Republicans in Congress who voted for the tax cuts and because it is precisely the sort of thing Clinton would do--and did do in 1993 when he walked away from his BTU tax proposal...
Perhaps, but I can think of two other reasons. Tax cutting is a matter of Republican theology; it is as close to the heart of the G.O.P.'s Sun Belt base as abortion is to the Democrats' legions of secular feminists. There is also a bit of family history here. Another President Bush once, famously, promised no new taxes. George W. Bush has not only been assiduous about doing the opposite in office of what Bill Clinton did, but also the opposite of what George H.W. Bush did. On the tax issue, as on the Gulf War, Oedipus rules...