Robert: Dealing only with your question on fiscal matters.
Bush presented himself as a fiscal conservative. Tax cuts are fine in an environment where normal market forces can react to them. And, hey, I like a tax cut as much as the next guy. But after 9/11 I think it was obvious that we were going to have to increase defense and homeland security. In World War II, Korea, any war...we were not told we could have guns and butter. (except Viet-nam, when Johnson't policies resulted in a vicious stagflation). Bush has not vetoed even a single bill. No one can tell me that putting on steel tarifs but not controlling the spending of his OWN party in congress is anything like the free trader/fiscal conservative he claims to be. I don't think he gets it.
Let's just say, for argument's sake, that despite whoever is elected this year that rising oil prices and other issues slow the U.S. economy to a 2% or 1.5% annual growth rate. What do we do then? We can't grow out of the deficit and the existing tax cuts will have done whatever they were going to do...would we cut spending then, when spending really could be a stimulus? Why would he do it then when he would not do it in 2002 or 2003?
I don't thnk Bush can see beyond what he is told to say. If you were to ask him if he is a conservative, he would say yes. If you asked him to define the term he would probably say, lower taxes, smaller government. Well, he would fail on the second one for sure. |
