`Little Bitty,' More's the Pity
Picture Courtesy of http://politicalhumor.about.com/
The Republicans controlling Congress return this week to anguish over how much more
of a tax cut the nation's wealthiest citizens have coming. The leaders and
President Bush would be wise to focus instead on the needs of the growing army
of unemployed Americans. A total of 2.6 million private sector jobs have been
lost across the past two years — a record for any modern presidency. Mr. Bush
should be jawboning on behalf of benefits for the jobless as heartily as he now
tours the land for still more relief for the affluent.
In lobbying for "at least" $550 billion more in tax reductions, Mr.
Bush is deriding the few resistant Senate Republicans for holding out for no
more than what he terms a "little bitty" package of $350 billion in
cuts over the decade. This sounds like a debate over whether to let the rich eat
cake or brioche. But $350 billion is the only option in play for opponents.
Meanwhile, the president firmly angles to cram in his beloved dividend tax cut.
Congressional leaders hope to settle the tax issue by Memorial Day and move
on to health care and appropriation debates. Talking about budgetary losers is
deemed impolitic while people are still debating how many hundred billions to
forgo via the tax cuts. But it's already clear that domestic programs are facing
a $168 billion cut across 10 years in such vital areas as education, homeland
security, veterans' care and transportation. House Republicans have already
tried to sidestep culpability by installing a legislative gimmick to
automatically authorize deficit borrowing. Instead of standing up and voting as
they were elected to do, lawmakers will have the $900 billion bill added on to
the current $6.4 trillion debt ceiling, neat as an after-dinner drink on the
people's credit card.
Some lawmakers, at least, try to remind us of creative might-have-beens.
Representative Richard Gephardt, a Democrat obviously, even egregiously running
for the presidency, has dared to suggest another go at the issue of universal
health care. If nothing else, we can salute his sense of irony in proposing to
pay for this much needed but costly social program by flatly rolling back the
Bush tax cuts. Remember those days? When governments did more than cut taxes and
shrink government?
