6.09.00
A Big Tax Win — and A Loss

6.07.00
Battle of the Sexes

5.25.00
Goldilocks Was Wrong

5.18.00
Stop That Train!

5.09.00
States of Confusion

5.08.00
Congress Busts the Bank — Again

4.26.00
Soak the Rich: Cut the Capital Gains Tax

4.12.00
How the Other Half Thinks

4.06.00
Taxing Fantasies

t’s hard to believe that in the span of just one day the Republicans can be so totally victorious and then totally inept. Here’s what I mean.

The congressional GOP strategy of taking up tax items one by one has been an unqualified success. Today the House passed a bill to phase out the the unfair death tax. We won by an astonishingly large margin: 279-136. An awesome victory for the pro-growth, tax cutting movement. We got 65 Democrats and almost all Republicans to vote for a tax bill that was pilloried by Dick Gephardt as a “giant tax cut for the rich.” The liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities denounced the bill as giving all the tax benefits to just the richest 1 percent of families. For once, the class warfare rhetoric fell with a thud. Although most Americans are not directly affected by the death tax, they know instinctively that it is unfair. They want it gone. Clinton is likely to veto this bill. Fine. Al Gore will pay the price.

Steve Forbes had the rallying cry right: “No taxation without respiration!”

In recent weeks the Democrats have been voting overwhelmingly for Republican tax cut proposals. We won the battle on the Social Security earnings test — a tax penalty against seniors who work after age 65 — by an almost unanimous vote. We had been fighting for this for 20 years! A majority of Democrats support marriage penalty relief. About 50 Democrats voted to scrap the income tax code.

Will someone please tell the GOP brain trust that when you’re winning, you don’t retreat, you charge ahead?

I am referring to the supremely stupid announcement by Republicans reported in the Washington Post this morning that the GOP will deemphasize the tax issue at the summer convention. If the GOP isn’t going to talk taxes, what in the world are they going to discuss? How they’ve busted the budget 3 years in a row now? Outspending Bill Clinton on education programs? Compassionate conservatism? Bob Novak has said it best: “The only reason God put Republicans on this earth was to cut taxes.”

Oh well. Perhaps if Republicans won’t talk about trimming the highest tax burden in 50 years, the Democrats, who seem to have found religion on this issue, will. Here’s hoping that at least one party will be talking taxes this summer. On to Los Angeles.

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