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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: worksinjammies who wrote (70317)	6/9/2006 12:17:52 AM
From: CalculatedRisk	Respond to of 362361

The DeLay Principle, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times select.nytimes.com Excerpts here: economistsview.typepad.com The federal estate tax had its origins in war. As America moved toward involvement in World War I, Congress — facing a loss of tariff revenue, but also believing that the most privileged members of society should help pay for the nation's military effort — passed the Emergency Revenue Act of 1916, which included a tax on large inheritances. But today's Congressional leaders have a very different view about wartime priorities. "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," declared Tom DeLay ... in 2003. Mr. DeLay has since been dethroned, but the DeLay Principle lives on. Consider the priorities on display in Congress this week. ... Americans from an earlier era might have been puzzled by the DeLay Principle. They still believed in the principle enunciated by Theodore Roosevelt, who called for an inheritance tax in 1906: "The man of great wealth," said T.R., "owes a peculiar obligation to the state." But the DeLay Principle isn't really that hard to understand: it's just like the Roosevelt Principle, but the other way around. These days, the state — or rather, the political coalition that controls the state, and depends on campaign contributions to maintain that control — owes a peculiar obligation to men of great wealth. And nothing is more important than cutting these men's taxes, even in the face of a war.