A Tax Cut Without End

True, the price tag on the tax bill the House approved this morning is officially only $320 billion over 10 years, barely two-fifths of the $726 billion President Bush proposed in February.

True too, it is even smaller than the $350 billion measure initially passed by the Senate that Mr. Bush ridiculed as "little bitty."

But the $320 billion figure, which is expected to clear the Senate today, is artificial.

No one expects that tax breaks for married couples and a bigger tax credit for children, popular features of the bill, will be allowed to expire after next year. This is what lawmakers call a sunset. It was put into the measure to hold down the 10-year cost.

Nor, barring a political upheaval that puts Democrats in the White House and in control of Congress, is it likely that the lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains will be allowed to expire after 2008, another sunset in the bill.

If these elements of the tax cut are calculated on a 10-year basis, the cost in lost revenue stands to be over $800 billion, more than what the president proposed, according to the first analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priority, a liberal research institute.
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Unkindest tax cut is bound to fail
George Bush's tax cuts are going to worsen the inequity in American society, writes Julian Borger

The Bush administration prides itself on being a government of conviction, and rightly so. It sticks to policies even when circumstances and popular opinion change. It also sticks to them when they clearly don't work.

The White House, for example, remained determined to change the regime in Iraq even after it became clear that very few nations were prepared to back the US, and that there was insufficient evidence to persuade them. Similarly President Bush has stuck to his insistence on successive, sweeping tax cuts, despite the uncomfortable fact that the premise on which they were first proposed - a large government surplus - has evaporated.

ndividually these policies involve bold risks. Together they represent a recklessness that could inflict lasting damage on the US economy.
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Bush continues to rack up debt

Bush has already scored record deficits, so it was only a matter of time before he would ask the nation to extend its credit line by a record $1 trillion. Okay, okay. The number is actually $984 billion, but that's like putting an item for sale for $19.99. We all know it's actually $20.

And this $1 trillion debt increase comes on the heels of a $450 billion increase last year -- an increase that Bush has burned through in a single year.

The GOP-led Senate will vote and almost certainly approve the debt increase. Another nail in the coffin of the illusion that Republicans are better stewards of the nation's finances. But this will offer Democrats a great opportunity to highlight the gross incompetence exhibit by the GOP-dominated Congress and their president.
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