Quick quiz: what's going to cost the U.S. more over the next decade: the exploding costs of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare or Bush's tax cuts? Despite all the talk we hear about the prior, it's not even close -- the tax cuts are poised to cost the treasury far, far, more.And yet, every Republican presidential candidate in the field, to a man, vows to make each of Bush's cut permanent, beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010. As the NYT's Tom Redburn notes today, over the next 10 years, it will cost "roughly $2.5 trillion in revenues now expected under current law. And that's just the beginning."
No serious people believe this. Bush’s own budget director, Jim Nussle, recently said, “There are those including myself who … in the passion of the argument have made statements — I think I even made a statement once — that tax relief did pay for itself.” Needless to say, Nussle doesn’t believe that anymore. Edward P. Lazear, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, has said the same thing: “I certainly would not claim that tax cuts pay for themselves.”And yet there’s Giuliani, bragging in a TV commercial about what he claims to “know” about tax policy. [“I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues.”] Please.
Of course, it’s worth noting that he’s not the only leading Republican making truly bizarre claims about taxes.
Today, Michael Kinsley takes Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee to task for their own nonsense.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
