They’re inevitable. This president, who knows how to duck personal responsibility, may not have to preside over them. But his successor will be forced to. The Medicare explosion and Social Security crunch mean something obvious to anyone with eyes to see:
[B]aby boomers’ children and grandchildren face massive tax increases. Social Security and Medicare spending now equals 14 percent of wage and salary income, reports Bell. By 2030, using the trustees’ various projections, that jumps to 26 percent. Of course, payroll taxes don’t cover all the costs of Social Security and Medicare. Still, these figures provide a crude indicator of the economic burden, because costs are imposed heavily on workers via some tax (including the income tax), government borrowing (a.k.a. the deficit) and cuts in other government programs.
Bruce Bartlett, a conservative (or what used to be a conservative), has begin to think of how best to minimize the damage Bush is doing to the economy, and believes a VAT is the least worst option. My only point is that it is absurd to believe that this president has really lowered the tax burden. By spending through the roof, while cutting taxes, all this president has done is borrow. The debt will have to paid off, or inflated or devalued away. But before then, this president’s big government spending will require either massive cuts in entitlements (which he has threatened to veto) or massive tax hikes. I have no confidence that either party will cut entitlements. Bush’s domestic legacy is that he has made America safe for a vast expansion of government and taxation.
The Dish 