The "Just Trust Us" Congress

The Hill is reporting that Democrats intend to delay a decision about whether to renew the Bush tax cuts until after the election. Charitably, the Hill insists that the decision means that voters "won't know" the status of their tax burden when they go to the polls.

I'd beg to differ. Politicians who intend to cut taxes generally do so to curry favor with voters before the election. There's no reason to wait until afterwards unless, of course, they anticipate their decision will be unpopular -- or, in other words, that they intend to impose a heaping helping of new taxes on Americans.

Remarkably, Senator Harkin predicts that the issue will be confronted in the Congress' lame-duck sessions, after the elections. As I've argued before, deliberately postponing important legislative decisions until after there is a realistic chance of electoral accountability for them is a sleazy tactic, and deeply corrosive of democratic governance.