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The Tax-Cut Expansion: Democrats may want to change the economic subject
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| Contributor | Tony82 |
| Last Edited | Tony82 Oct 16, 2003 10:07am |
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| Category | Editorial |
| News Date | Thursday, October 16, 2003 06:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | The good economic news keeps coming. Yesterday's reports included bullish growth for September and early October from 10 of 12 Federal Reserve districts, and another spate of sharply higher corporate earnings. Sooner or later all of this is going to get noticed by the American electorate, perhaps even by the Democrats running for President.
We understand that the non-incumbent party has to make the case for change. And for months now Howard Dean and his pursuers for the Democratic nomination have pounded away at President Bush's economic record. "The worst economy since Hoover" is a favorite refrain, which even for politics is a tad hyperbolic. General Wesley Clark has uttered what he seems to think is deadly criticism--that Mr. Bush's economic policy has consisted almost entirely of "tax cuts."
Well, yes, and fortunately so. We have expressed our differences with the White House on trade, currencies and federal spending. But there's no doubt that the second round of Bush tax cuts, which advanced the marginal-rate reductions to this year, are having exactly the growth effect that supply-siders predicted. They boosted incentives, both for individuals and small businesses that pay taxes at the individual tax rate, and investment has accelerated in turn. The Federal Reserve has also had the monetary throttle open, perhaps too much, and certainly enough to erase any further fear of "deflation." The U.S. economy tends to rebound naturally left to its own devices, but it doesn't hurt to have sound tax policy helping it along. |
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