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Monday, January 29, 2007
Letting the Bush Tax Cuts Expire: Ahead of our Time(s)
The lead editorial in the much-read Sunday New York Times yesterday, The Budget Illusion, cites last week's CBO projections of a cumulative deficit of $2.9 trillion to $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years "if, as Mr. Bush wishes, the tax cuts are extended beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010."
It concludes:
Mr. Bush’s tax cuts should largely be allowed to expire. Facing that truth is not a fiscal challenge, it’s a political one. Mr. Bush will not meet it. But a future president and Congress will have to.
The Times' recommendation that Bush's first-term tax cuts largely be allowed to expire may be good policy, but its timing is confusing. We will be in a position to begin at last to enact policy along these lines:
- if the next President decides to spend capital on fiscal responsibility
- when the Bush tax cut expiration deadline bears down on Congress
- as the tax-cutting imperative in our political culture begins to fade (a process already underway, claims Mark Schmitt in Read My Lips: Raise Taxes)
Posted by Dana Chasin
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