Tear Down Those Tax "Shrines"

washingtonmonthly.com — In the web-wide effort to identify winners and losers in the “fiscal cliff” battle, one of the arguments we’ve heard cited most often is that George W. Bush was the big “winner” because his signature tax cuts finally became part of permanent law, not some temporary budget measure. This conceit, in fact, has become a big part of the progressive case that Obama got rolled. Like Republicans rationalizing votes for the tax bill, these progressives are pretending most Americans got the Bush tax cuts all over again, shiny new and fiscally lethal as they were the first time around. And both sides are using the word “enshrined” to refer to the magical effect the vote had on the tax cuts first enacted in 2001. Sorry, I don’t buy it.

more »