AUSTIN -- The president has taken to saying peculiar things
again. "There are no shades of gray in our war on terrorism," he announced
the other day. Excuse me, but if you've ever seen anything grayer than some
of our warlord allies in the Northern Alliance, please write at once.
I especially like the reports that the warlords are now calling
in American air strikes on one another. "A City, Free of Taliban, Returns to
the Thieves," reports The New York Times. "Jalalabad, a city in the hands of
thugs and crooks." I'd say that's grayish.
"Not over my dead body will they raise your taxes," announced
the president. Well, we know what he meant. According to bipartisan budget
experts, we're back in deficit for at least the next several years. That
didn't take them long, did it? Nobody is proposing raising taxes, but some
fiscally prudent voices have been raised on behalf of postponing some of the
generous tax cuts the Republicans gave to the rich in April. You may think
Americans are smart enough to tell the difference between raising taxes and
postponing tax cuts, but apparently Republicans don't. You can already see
what a great political debate this is going to be.
This has an eerie familiarity to Texans, where Bush pushed
through not one but two tax cuts that left the cupboard so bare, the state
is now stuck with some hideous choices. With an estimated $5 billion
deficit, Texas will probably have to follow the lead of Gov. Jeb Bush in
Florida and cut funding for the schools. Jeb Bush just signed a bill there
slashing $600 million from education.
One of the most ridiculous myths about government is that
politicians just love to raise taxes and are always looking for ways to do
so. Pols consider raising taxes certain death, and they are often right. The
last time the feds raised taxes in 1993, in the face of deficits the size of
the Grand Canyon and a $2 trillion debt, the Democrats got it through by one
vote in the House and Al Gore voting in the Senate. They promptly lost at
the next election, bringing us all the joys of Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay,
Trent Lott & Co. Poor Big George Bush, who had done yeoperson service by
agreeing to raise taxes in 1990, also paid with his political life, you
recall.
Nobody ever has liked taxes and nobody ever will like taxes, but
nobody hates raising taxes worse than a politician. It is so notoriously
difficult that the late Rep. Jumbo Ben Atwell has carved on his stone in the
Texas State Cemetery, "He passed a tax bill." That's why stupid tax cuts are
so infuriating (almost as infuriating as stupid spending). For Bush to come
back now and trumpet his "economic stimulus" package is pushing folly beyond
permission. The package was so bad, it has been widely reported that when
they ran it by focus groups, people refused to believe the accurate
description of what was actually in it.
The good news is, they are changing the name of the bill!
They've put the word "security" in the title! Now instead of economic
stimulus, it's the "economic security" bill. This is such an improvement.
Also, the former Bush energy plan is now the "energy security bill." Since
the normal danger when discussing public issues is oversimplifying them, I
suggest only warily that this debate may be simpler than it looks.
The Republican theory of ec-stim is that we should cut taxes,
especially for rich people and big corporations. This, the theory goes, will
inspire them to invest their new loot in job-creating enterprises, thus
ginning up the economy. The Democrats tend to favor public spending,
especially focused on those who have lost their jobs, on the theory that
these folks are so hard-up, they'll rush out and spend it on new shoes for
the baby, this driving up demand and stimulating the economy to produce more
again. Some judicious souls believe in a mixture of both.
The trouble with the Republican theory is there's absolutely no
guarantee tax cuts will be put into increased production, and thus job
creation, and considerable evidence that it won't be. The rich can sit on
their money -- they don't have to spend it. Corporations have no reason to
increase production when there is no increase in demand, plus they can use
the money in other ways, for leveraged buy-outs or buying back their own
stock or whatever they'd like to do with lots of money. The Democrats'
theory is more direct and, depending on which economist you listen to, works
better. (The economists had their national convention last week and once
again, laid end to end, couldn't reach a conclusion.)
And even simpler way to look at this is as a debate between
demand-siders and supply-siders. As some of you will recall from the Reagan
era, supply-side economics didn't work out real well. That Laffer curve
turned out to be a steep one down. So the question is: How long is a
national memory?
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
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