So, according to John Kerry, every criticism of his record on defense, foreign policy and the military is somehow impugning his patriotism? Hasn’t it occurred to him and some other Democrats who leap – and I mean LEAP – to this inference that their very prickliness is actually far more revealing? If he’s going to win over wavering Bush-voters, Kerry has to show why he’s not soft on terror and not soft on defense. Instead, he resorts almost reflexively to this whining, overly-defensive projection. Not a good sign.
THE TAX ISSUE: My TNR colleague, Jon Chait, has written what I think is a pretty challenging cover story for The New Republic this week. It’s about our fiscal situation and conservative critiques of Bush’s spending. The bottom line of Jon’s argument is that conservatives are right about spending increases under Bush – but that these are not really responsible for the bulk of the deficit and trivial when you look at the bigger picture. Chait blames the Bush tax cuts – and, to some extent, he’s right. He also cites vast new spending on defense and homeland security. Again, to some extent, he’s right. Looking forward, you also have the new Medicare entitlement, which Chait likes (and so largely ignores). And then you have entitlement spending going through the roof as the boomers retire. All in all, our current mess looks like the fiscal situation in Spain as its empire began to collapse; or Britain at the beginning of the last century. Yes, Jon implies, we fiscal conservatives are right to be mad about Bush’s big non-defense spending binges – especially on Medicare, agriculture and pork. But if that’s all we talk about, we’re not confronting the real issue: the tax cuts and the military spending.
PAYING FOR THE WAR: So should we? My own view is that we’re not spending enough in the war on terror or homeland defense. I’m also viscerally opposed to tax hikes. But I can’t keep having it every which way, if I also believe in restraining the debt. I used to think that running deficits would itself restrain spending – and then we see a Republican president endorsing the Medicare expansion after sending the debt through the roof. So that theory goes out the window. I don’t believe in the supply-side notion that cutting taxes boosts revenue so much that the cuts pay for themselves (although I do think they help stimulate economic activity). So what’s the responsible thing to do? Ideally, I’d propose means-testing social security, raising the retirement age, ending agricultural subsidies and carving away corporate welfare. But none of that is likely to happen any time soon. So I’m gradually moving toward the belief that we should propose some kind of temporary war-tax. Levy it on those earning more than $200,000 and direct it primarily to financing the war on terror. Put in a sunset clause of, say, four years. It may be time for some fiscal sacrifice for the war we desperately need to fight. And we need to fight it without creating government insolvency which, in the long run, will undermine the war. I don’t love this idea; and I’m open to other suggestions. But it behooves us pro-war fiscal conservatives to propose something.
The Dish 