Our new editorial:

Republican leaders have now agreed to extend the capital-gains and dividend tax cuts until the end of 2010. All of Bush’s tax cuts would expire at that time. We would have preferred to make the tax cuts permanent the moment they were enacted. Or at least as permanent as policies ever are: No Congress can prevent a future Congress from raising taxes. The most Congress can do is to prevent taxes from going back up automatically, without a vote. Making the tax cuts permanent would merely increase the probability that tax rates would stay low. Extending them raises that probability, too, but not as much. The extension makes it a little bit easier to make economic plans for the next few years.
But we ought to do more. One of the most valuable of Bush’s tax cuts—the provision to let businesses write off the cost of investment quickly, instead of stretching the write-off over many years—has already expired. It should be reinstated. America taxes corporations relatively heavily. Growth-oriented conservatives should aim to change that.

Read the full editorial here .