Newsweek’s Allan Sloan is always good for a strong column, but he’s looking particularly smart this morning. A couple of weeks ago, Sloan argued that the failures of Bush’s repeated tax cuts for the wealthy will in no way deter the White House from doing the exact same thing again.
My predictions, based on four years of watching Bush, assume that we’re not dealing with a typical pol tinkering with the system. He’s Chainsaw George, an economic radical who wants to raze the conventional order and impose his own. Look at his first four years. When budget rules seemed to limit the size of his 2001 tax cuts, he adopted the fiction that the cuts would be allowed to expire. This let him cram 10 pounds of cuts into a seven-pound bag — and he immediately started pushing to make the cuts permanent. Ditto for the 2003 cuts. There’s never a reason not to cut taxes. The economy’s good? Cut taxes, give people their money back. Economy’s bad? Cut taxes to stimulate it. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, W’s gotta cut. Deficits, shmeficits. Who cares? Just borrow some more from China and Japan.
Sloan’s prediction wasn’t completely out of left field. Let’s not forget that Bush has cut taxes four times in four years, despite spiraling debt and two costly wars. Indeed, though many have forgotten about it, the Bush White House leaked word in May 2003 that if given a second term, the president would demand tax cuts literally every year he occupied the Oval Office.
As the Post’s Dana Milbank and Dan Balz explained, the administration’s goal is “nonstop tax cuts.” Bush aides suggested the president “will attempt a new tax cut every year Bush remains in office.”
And sure enough, there was Dick “Go F— Yourself” Cheney yesterday, explaining that the gang’s reckless and irresponsible agenda hasn’t changed one bit.
At a highly-scripted, overtly-staged economic “summit,” Cheney underscored the administration’s commitment to fiscal responsibility by insisting Bush would ask for more tax cuts that the wealthy don’t need and the country can’t afford.
…Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated to a White House economic conference that the administration supported more tax cuts, which some analysts said could deepen the budget deficit and threaten the dollar’s value.
Some? Are there any analysts who doubt this?
More tax cuts, more spending, $2 trillion to kill Social Security, and a war that costs about a quarter-trillion dollars (and counting). It’s almost as if the Bush team wants to destroy the country.