The Absurd Report

Fiscal Policy: Jack Spratt may not have been able to consume any fat, but his namesake who chairs the House Budget Committee is making sure the federal government won’t be going on a diet anytime soon.

Rep. John Spratt Jr., D-S.C., presided over passage on a party-line vote of a $3 trillion budget plan for next year, featuring expansions of domestic programs going nearly 5% above President Bush’s budget. It elicited a promise of presidential vetoes on appropriations bills.

But House Democrats weren’t just promising to deliver more goodies to the many beneficiaries of government largesse that form their political base; they were also promising that doing so would produce budget surpluses by 2012 and 2013.

How? By factoring in the massive automatic tax increases that would come from the Bush tax cuts being allowed to expire.

As if that’s not enough new taxes, House Democrats would also impose $70 billion in unspecified tax increases as the price for permanently fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

Presumably, the U.S. economy will just cooperate and act as if it isn’t getting dealt a body blow of substantially higher tax rates on income and investment. After the Reagan and George W. Bush tax-cut-driven expansions, why is it still too much to expect congressional Democrats to learn from recent economic history?

More from IBD Editorials

Tags: Budget, Economy, Fiscal Policy

Trackback URI | Comments RSS