Only Congress Can Save Us From Irresponsible Bush Tax Cuts

By: Cokie Roberts

With the war in Iraq drawing down, President Bush has started a new campaign. He's trying to use his military success to propel a huge and irresponsible tax cut into law. Now it's up to Congress to rediscover its independence and either block the President or force him into making significant compromises.

It won't be easy for the lawmakers to stand up to a popular President, whose job approval rating in the latest New York Times/CBS poll leaped to 73% - about 15 points better than before the fighting started. But they should take heart from another finding: Only 46% approve of Bush's handling of the economy.

In short, Bush is two different Presidents, powerful on foreign and military matters but decidedly vulnerable on domestic policy. Congress should resist his efforts to stampede them into unwise decisions, and in the weeks before they departed town for a spring recess, the lawmakers displayed some encouraging signs of spunk.

With four Republicans joining a solid Democratic bloc, the Senate passed a budget that limits the President's tax cut proposal to $350 billion, less than half the $726 billion he requested. And Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who heads the Finance Committee, vowed that no tax bill exceeding that limit would become law.

Much legislative maneuvering lies ahead, and the President is already exerting enormous pressure on the GOP defectors. But he now concedes that $550 billion is the best he can get, and there's still a good chance to force an even lower figure.

The President campaigned aggressively for Republicans last fall, and GOP lawmakers owe him a lot. But not everything, as other recent legislative actions indicate.

• Republicans led the charge in rejecting a White House request for virtually unlimited flexibility in spending funds to rebuild Iraq. Key players are unhappy with the administration's plan to give the Pentagon, not the State Department, the lead role in running postwar Iraq.
  
  
• Republican votes in the Senate helped defeat the President's request for authority to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. But since the House approved the President's plan, the outcome is still in doubt.
  
  
• Bush's proposals to revamp Medicare have met staunch opposition from both parties.
  

But the big game is the economy. Voters always place pocketbook issues first, and even in the middle of a war, 33% of all voters surveyed by the Times and CBS said that jobs and the economy were the biggest problems facing the country - twice the number that cited foreign policy and terrorism. Two million jobs have been lost since Bush took office, and the jobless rate has climbed from 4.1% to 5.8%. If it's Bush's war, it's also his economy. Good or bad, up or down.

Unfortunately, the President's answer to sluggish growth has been more symbolic than real. He ties his economic plans to the war effort, saying he wants to create jobs for the troops when they come home from the Persian Gulf. And a highly targeted tax cut, funneling refunds into hard-pressed family budgets, could probably do some good.

But that's not what the President proposes. Most economists agree that the bulk of his package, eliminating taxes on stock dividends, will do little to stimulate the economy or provide work - for returning soldiers or anybody else.

In fact, his plan could make matters worse, fueling a wildfire deficit that is already burning out of control. As a recent article in the New York Times by six former officeholders from both parties puts it: "Congress can't simply conclude that deficits don't matter. Over the long term, deficits matter a great deal."

Deficits, they assert, lead to higher interest rates, higher federal debt payments, and reduced savings, all trends that strangle economic growth instead of stimulating it. Their conclusion: "It is neither fiscally nor morally responsible to give ourselves tax cuts and leave future generations with an even higher tax burden."

Congress should heed those words when the President puts the heat on. Just because he won the war in Iraq does not mean they should pass a tax package that is fiscally and morally indefensible.