No Tax Cut = Tax Hike?

From today's Boston Globe: "HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. -- President Bush wrapped up a two-day campaign swing through Florida yesterday at a window manufacturing plant outside Tampa, where during what the White House described as a discussion on the economy, he told audience members that calls to repeal tax cuts he pushed through Congress were essentially calls to raise taxes." This is a fascinating rhetorical shift, and a thoroughly dishonest one.

While it is technically true that a repeal of the Bush tax cut would raise taxes from where they are now (duh), any effort to redistribute the tax burden in a way that would put more cash in the hands of people more likely to actually spend it (ie. people at the lower echelons of society), would be a step closer to an economic recovery benefitting a greater portion of society. The only political problem for Bush and Co. is that a progressive tax cut wouldn't put recovery in the hands of some faith-based trickle-down scheme (which funnels the cash through the hands of his biggest supporters). Economic indicators show that whatever cash he's given back to Americans is being held on to (just look at the almost unprecidented lack of job creation despite other positive indicators). This is not surprisingly considering the lack of faith in the nation's longterm stability in the face of the huge deficit caused by the tax cut. If the tax cut were actually geared toward economic recovery it would go directly to those who need it the most, but who aren't likely to vote for Bush. Now, this isn't a radical socialist position or anything, it's just what serious economists not funded by the Heritage Foundation are seeing (and not just Paul Krugman).