That's a fair comment Rev. What do you cut? The Right, or at least part of it, doesn't want to answer that question because its politically unpopular to cut spending most of the time. There's a part of the political Right that believes cutting taxes means more government income. That's true in extreme circumstances such as the UK in the 1970s when earned capital gains on real estate were taxed at a rate of 98%, but it really doesn't apply in most markets of North America. In fact, despite Bush's posturing, discretionary government spending has risen more under his term than it ever did under Clinton, even excluding military spending. In Canada, its going to become more and more difficult to cut taxes because health care spending is growing faster than the economy and the population is getting older.
But that doesn't mean you can't tailor tax policy when the times suit it. I thought Bush's tax cuts were ingenious, even though too much went to the rich, it focused at least in part on the wrong kind, i.e. estate taxes, and it was completely accidental. Much of Bush's tax cuts have a sunset clause, i.e. they expire and go back up again. That's the absolute best fiscal policy response (unless demand has collapsed) because it gives a jolt to the economy then recalibrates when the economy is humming again. He wouldn't have been able to pass the cuts without the sunset clauses because the cuts would cause the deficit to explode. (And it did.) But of course, that wasn't the intention. Bush figured that Congress would squash the sunset clause and make the cuts permanent, figuring that no American politician wanted to be known for raising taxes. But its not working quite the way he thought. Now Congress is finding compromises, i.e. lifting the estate tax cieling from $1 million to $3 million and making it permanent instead of Bush's $10 million plan, or letting the sunset clauses expire as it is doing with the accelerated depreciation. So Bush crafted the absolute right policy response with the absolute wrong intentions. Sometimes its better to be lucky than good.
