BRITBLOGS

An account of a recent seminar at the Adam Smith Institute.

OH WELL: There I was, getting all excited about a possible Bush reform that would streamline the tax code, empower ordinary citizens at the expense of lobbyists and bureaucrats, and restore the popular and populist elements of tax-cutting. Now, the cold water seems to be in abundance. According to this Washington Post story,

[T]he administration plans to push major amendments that would shield interest, dividends and capitals gains from taxation, expand tax breaks for business investment and take other steps intended to simplify the system and encourage economic growth… To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance.

Wow. If you wanted to give Paul Krugman another round of ammunition in arguing that the Bushies only care about the investor classes and corporations, this couldn’t be bettered. And making it harder to provide people with health insurance? That’s the ticket.

ONE BUSH: Jeb seems to understand that a state amendment to ban legal protections for gay couples is neither good public policy, nor even faintly necessary. Bush’s radical idea is that you should only amend the constitution if there’s a proven need. Since there’s no legal history of civil marriage being transportable to another state if that state opposes it as a matter of public policy, and since the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act enshrines that principle even more emphatically, and since even Massachusetts hasn’t finally resolved its policy, real conservatives should wait and see. But, of course, the Republican party is no longer controlled for the most part by real conservatives.