Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Moderates forced Bush to make tax cut temporary

Many on the left are wondering how it is that President Bush was so successful passing his tax cuts and other agenda items with at most 55 Republicans and for much of the time less than that.

The answer is he wasn't! Sure George W. Bush won passage of his tax cuts, especially in 2001 but moderates made him change package so that they wound up temporary.

That is why they are expiring in the next 2 years. At the time, the Republicans probably thought this wasn't a problem because they assumed Republicans would be in power or that Democrats wouldn't want to allow taxes to be raised.

But the fact is, the Democratic Party has never accepted "the Bush tax cuts" and many of them will expire. Like the estate tax repeal will be scaled back to something Democrats would have done in the the first place. The tax cuts for the top earners will most likely be allowed to lapse.

So Democrats can raise taxes without taking a vote, while getting to claim they are cutting taxes for middle and lower income people. The Democrats will probably keep the Bush tax cuts for these groups.

So, the price of working with the moderates of 2001 is going to haunt Republicans in the very near future.

It is easy to look at someone else, like President George W. Bush, and wonder how he got it so good.

No comments: