Jon Chait responds:

Spruiell seems to be suggesting that we should enact “permanent” tax cuts during recessions, then cancel those tax cuts when the economy recovers.

No. I am suggesting that we try not to telegraph the expiration date of the tax cuts, because that would mute the incentive effects that make them valuable. I am saying that if, after taxes are cut, someone in government wants to raise them again, he or she should make that case at that point in time, when the need for additional revenue arises. The assumption that taxes will definitely need to be higher in the future should not be built into every tax cut. The misunderstanding here probably arises from two people with different opinions about Keynesian fiscal management of the economy talking past each other a little bit. I don’t think the government necessarily needs to raise taxes every time we have a few good quarters of GDP growth. Chait evidently does.

He also asserts that:

All this nonsense about the need for permanent tax cuts as a recession-fighting tool is really ideological cover. Conservatives want to reduce tax rates, especially on the rich, and the recession is a pretext. They hold up the recession as a reason to implement the policy, but the recession has nothing to do with it.

Well, what’s good for the economy is especially good for the economy during recessions, I think. But I’ll admit that Chait is correct about the way it looks, if he’ll admit that, to conservatives, the $787 billion stimulus looked like the enactment of a left-wing wish list carried out under the pretense that it was all about creating jobs to fight the recession. We’ve passed four Keynesian stimulus bills since the onset of the recession in early 2008, and Congress is right now working on a fifth. We’ve spent almost as much on stimulus as we’ve spent in Iraq and Afghanistan — more, if the “jobs bill” that passed the House in May passes the Senate. Dude — where’s the jobs?