"As much of a spendthrift as President Bush 43 is, he might surprise us. It would not be pleasant."
My expectation that there will be no major, long-term tax changes enacted is based mostly on the calendar. (That... and Bush II has no 'mojo' left' for domestic policy. Iraq is sucking up all he has left.)
By beginning of '08... election season will deep-freeze all, and the GOP will be looking to it's presumptive nominee for direction, not to Bush, and the Dems likewise will look to their candidate.
[As far as much-needed Tax Reform --- the one golden chance for that was killed off two or three years ago when the President made the policy mistake of putting Social Security reform (which went down in flames) FIRST on his agenda, and Tax Reform only AFTER SS reform was completed.] "President Bush provided leadership. In hindsight it appears that nobody in Congress was willing to follow his leadership. It would be difficult to deny him credit for leading. As I have said before, adults tend to pick their battles. he picked his, but didn't get as much cooperation as he needed."
In *HINDSIGHT*?
In hindsight, and in FORESIGHT at the time, everyone knew that he was killing off all chances for tax reform by the way he ordered those options. The WH was, no doubt, well informed of this by the leadership (both sides of the aisle) from Congress... so either Bush choose to disregard this advise (perhaps analagous to his rejecting the advice of military and foreign affairs 'old hands' in the Iraq run-up, and going instead with the more... er... sketchy 'neo-con' happy visions, instead of Real Politik), believing inaccurately, as it turned out, that he was correct about the achievability of MASSIVELY EXPENSIVE S.S. reform *before* nailing down a tax regime (and this knowing what revenue he would have to utilize for that, and other, endeavors)....
Or else he totally knew what he was doing and ordered things that way on purpose... perhaps not having the heart of drive of a true tax reformer, but still wanting to keep the issue 'alive' as a campaign issue.
Either way, it's killed off for the balance of his term in office now... and we will have to wait for future leaders for tax reform. |
