Broder says NO to reversing Bush's tax cuts:

In a you've-got-to-read-it-to-believe-it column, Will Anyone Pay the Bills?, the "Dean" of the Washington D.C. journalists, David Broder, complains about the fiscal damage done by Bush's tax cuts, yet prescribes a solution which is mostly cutting entitlements.

Here are the lowlights of his column. First, Bush's folly:

• [There are] risks in the chronic refusal of the Republicans who govern the country to pay the bills they are amassing here and overseas.
• [There have been serious complaints leveled at] the president and his allies on Capitol Hill for their seeming nonchalance in letting the debt of the federal government climb so rapidly on their watch.
• [T]here was a moment after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks when this President Bush might have found a bipartisan readiness among Americans to forgo further tax cuts in light of the new demands that suddenly confronted the nation.
• [Post 9-11] the president ... [continued] the course of tax-cutting on which he had embarked -- a pledge he has regularly reiterated, even though the wreckage of fiscal policy has now become clear ...
• The real challenge is how to repair the fiscal damage Bush has left in his wake.

Broder has just written (in the list above) that part of the problem was irresponsible tax cuts. So, what's the solution? Reversing the tax cuts? No. Here is Broder on solutions:

• ... a greater readiness on the part of Democrats to reexamine the entitlement spending ...
• Democrats ... must ... recognize the necessity of reforming the country's retirement system
• ... adapt the whole social insurance concept of the 1930s to the realities of a new millennium.
• ... individual savings for the predictable expenses of child-rearing, education and retirement ...

Comments:

Broder spends some words on subsequent tax cuts. Not to oppose them outright, but merely to tie them immediately with budget cuts ("pay-as-you-go for both tax cuts and spending programs"). However, his main focus is on stripping guaranteed entitlement benefits. One argument he makes, that the social insurance concept of the 1930s is obsolete, is completely wrong. The "realities of a new millenium" include: a smaller family network (if any) to help an individual in need and an offloading of traditional safety-nets like health care and pensions from corporations to the individual. If anything, the insurance concept of the 1930s is the starting point for an more integrated government/private-sector/individual program of economic security and health coverage.

And where it Broder's call for a repeal of Bush's 2001, 2002, and 2003 tax cuts? Or for those in the pipeline today? Broder is silent. He does, however seem to endorse "short-term tax increases", whatever that means (and why short-term if we've got a massive budget problem). Is Broder bying into the Republican line that the expiration of Bush's tax cuts constitute a tax increase? Sounds like it.

Finally, Broder has this to say aboud Democrats:

• "... the thinking branch of the opposition [is] centered these days in the Democratic Leadership Council and its allied organizations ..."
• Good words about the New America Foundation. Who are they? A mixed bag of Democrats and Republicans, but get this, on their webpage for Retirement Security, their two Featured Publications are from the National Review Online (!) - [1 and 2] written by Kevin Hassett of the AEI and Maya MacGuineas (Broder:"one who has worked with Republican moderates as often as with Democrats, ... particularly insistent that Democrats must ante up for any bipartisan solutions to become possible").

Ugh. That's Broder's idea of reasonableness: The DLC and the New America Foundation working to strip your guaranteed entitlements in order to prevent reversing Bush's tax cuts for the rich.


posted by Quiddity at 10/27/2005 03:59:00 AM