Sen. Lieberman let out a little common sense, as he often does. He said he would repeal the tax cuts "on the highest-income Americans." Why? "They don't need it." That's true. Bill Gates doesn't need an extra million. But there are dangers in parsing the tax code in quite that way. What is the value of the redundant advantage? Does everyone absolutely require free speech protection, even for zany expressions of opinion?
The candidates were exercising extraordinary license in speech to analyze those Bush tax cuts for the rich. If you take the fabled 1 percent and add up the tax relief the very rich got from the Bush law, you come up with $25 billion per year. That is a great deal of money, but of course needs to be viewed in perspective. In the current fiscal year, the nondefense budget deficit will increase by $120 billion, which is nearly five times the cuts for the rich. Those increases in government expenses, which ran more than 20 percent higher than indexation, were not criticized by the Democratic candidates in part, one must suppose, because most of them were voted for by Democratic members of Congress.
And that perspective brings us to muse on how such as Sen. Lieberman parlay that 1 percent tax cut for the rich as causing the national debt, deficits, illegitimacy and malaria. Bush "sent us in a deficit that will cost the middle class, our children and grandchildren, all sorts of money in the future." The burdens and the liberties enjoyed by our grandchildren are more closely related to whether we can stop terrorism and swollen government than to any initiative by Mr. Bush to restore $25 billion to the people who earned it and keep on doing so.
But anti-rich talk is the bacon and eggs of Democratic camaraderie. Every now and then it exposes the witch doctors to a sharp little stab of thought. The lady interrogator, Gloria Borger, having heard all of the candidates declare that they would not want any new tax increases, asked them, How are you going to eliminate the tax cuts of 2001 without enacting tax increases? A nice point, but the candidates quickly, unanimously, swiftly decided to ignore it.