The tax cut two-step

PRESIDENT BUSH IS A NIMBLE salesman. He keeps altering the pitch for his tax cuts to fit the moment. The Bush tax cuts, you may recall, were first touted during the 2000 campaign as a means of returning vast projected surpluses to the American people. Once things soured and the fiscal outlook turned dire, the same package of tax cuts, plus some embellishments, was recast as a needed stimulus, a fiscal antibiotic to stave off a recession.

Now the economy is doing well, so Bush is no longer trying to sell his tax cuts as an emergency intervention. As the president noted in a speech Monday aimed at reminding Americans that his administration still has a domestic agenda, the U.S. economy added 215,000 jobs in November and is growing at an impressive 4.3% annual clip.

So with both the surpluses and the economic slowdown gone, Bush is left to defend the idea of making those supposedly temporary tax cuts permanent solely on the grounds that families have gotten used to them and need them to get by -- presumably including those families whose survival depends on the low 15% rate on capital gains.

Bush’s simple message that decent Americans know better than Washington how to spend their dollars is getting tiresome. Polls show that the public disapproves of the president’s economic policy, regardless of those impressive statistics. This may have something to do with the fact that he and the Republican Congress are starving the federal government of needed revenue in a time of war and other dire needs. Many traditional conservatives in Bush’s own party are growing increasingly concerned about the significant federal deficits that are boosting the national debt.

Monday’s speech highlighted the administration’s quandary. Bush spoke derisively about government when discussing tax rates, but when he talked about the rest of his agenda -- from shoring up pensions to healthcare programs and Medicare -- he touched on public welfare issues that require major public investment. And that’s without even bringing up the war in Iraq or the most worthy form of tax relief being considered by Congress -- scrapping or readjusting the alternative minimum tax so that it doesn’t continue to penalize middle-class taxpayers.