Ted Kennedy, as a presidential brother, makes Billy Carter and Roger Clinton look like Albert Einstein. He is the complete buffoon.
Ted's same old tax tune
A Boston Herald editorial
Thursday, January 17, 2002
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is nothing if not consistent. In his
world big government is still good government and with it comes
the need to finance all those government programs with high
taxes.
He may find common ground with President Bush on education and
certainly in the conduct of the war on terror, but when it
comes to economic policy, Kennedy is still an unrepentant
liberal and a master of the class warfare game.
``Some suggest that the nation is returning to business as
usual - to politics as usual. I reject that view'' Kennedy said
yesterday in a speech at the National Press Club. ``The spirit
of Sept. 11 is a mandate for new missions, not a summons to
selfishness.''
Kennedy can nearly always find a ``mandate for new missions.''
He justified his proposal yesterday to postpone some of the
scheduled future income tax rate cuts by what he said was the
need (among other things) to finance prescription drugs in
Medicare and to enroll all eligible children in Early Head
Start.
It's always something; for liberals there's always an ``unmet
need'' that justifies more spending. If it weren't Medicare
drugs it might be Internet connections for every home.
Junking last year's tax bill, for which 12 of 50 Democratic
senators voted, is totally unjustified when Congress is still
spending money with happy abandon on unneeded programs to
please politically powerful groups - for example, the farm bill
that awaits the Senate's return. It would add $62 billion to
subsidies over the next decade, for example, for the benefit of
families with twice the average net worth.
Raising taxes in a recession - that's what Kennedy wants to do
- is never smart. Kennedy says his proposals wouldn't take
effect until 2004, when the recession should be over. It's
still not smart: People make decisions on the basis of what
they expect their income to be in the future, not the taxes
they pay this year on income they earned last year. Change
expectations and you change behavior - in this case for the
worse, judged from an economic perspective.
A robust economy always means robust revenue, as Kennedy's
brother John understood when he proposed rate cuts as president
in 1962. An acceleration, not a postponement, of rate cuts now
would be a major step toward that goal.
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