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Tax-cut politics Fun with Numbers, Fun with WordsBy Rick Horowitz
My cousin Barry has a calendar, and a pencil; he's been threatening to slide them across the table when he argues with certain people about the state of the economy. Here's today's date, he wants to say. And here's how much time is left in President Bush's term. And then he'd make a simple request. "Circle the date when it's no longer Clinton's fault." "They just won't do it," he predicts. (This was a few weeks ago, and he'd already had calendar-free versions of the conversation multiple times.) He's exasperated -- but not especially surprised. After all, what if they were to pick a date, and when that great day came, the economy was still stuck in the mud? Or even worse, what if they were to pick a date and when that great day came, the economy had started to turn around and so they stood up proudly and said, "From here on out, it's all ours" -- and then it all headed south again? How embarrassing! So of course they won't do it. Anyway, that was a few weeks ago. Maybe now they'll do it, you're thinking. Maybe now that the president has managed to push through Congress the latest big tax cut he wanted, maybe now this White House will stop blaming the lousy economic numbers on the previous White House, or on Osama bin Laden, or Saddam Hussein, or sunspots, or psoriasis, or... Or maybe not. Call me a cynical sort, but I don't see it happening -- not any time soon, anyway. For starters, various influential Republicans have been suggesting for months that if the president didn't get the exact size and shape of tax cut he proposed, he could still point the Finger o' Blame at those stubborn Democrats for gumming up the works. And officially (which is to say, without looking too closely at the various accounting gimmicks and Fantasyland assumptions), he got less than half of what he wanted. Even though the real numbers, with Roveland politics factored in, may be even larger than he requested. Still, given a choice between taking a pounding and pounding on Tom Daschle -- well, that's an easy one. But that's not the only reason I'm cynical. Here's the other reason: From off in the distance, I hear the muffled sound of men at work. Bush men. What are they doing? They're moving the goalposts. It was the new Treasury secretary, John Snow, who tripped my sensors just the other day. According to the story I saw, Snow was predicting that good things would come from the president's tax cut; he said it would "create and secure jobs" for millions of Americans. "He did not say," the reporter pointed out, "exactly how many." But that's not what got me. What got me were those two little words he did say: "...and secure." For however long this debate has been going on (it only seems like forever), the president and his supporters have been insisting that this latest tax cut will create new jobs -- plenty of new jobs. A million new jobs by the end of next year, according to the president. Even more than a million, say some of his allies on the Sunday-morning talk shows; how about 1.4 million? Sounds great, even if it wouldn't quite make up for the 2 million jobs that have already disappeared since the president took office. (It also wouldn't get anywhere near the 20-some million jobs added to the economy during those eight terrible Clinton years.) But the trouble with predicting 1.4 million new jobs, or a million new jobs, or any specific number of new jobs, is that it's so...specific. You offer up a number and you're accountable. People can weigh your prediction against reality, and if you don't measure up, they might actually notice! But if you start talking about a plan that will "create and secure" millions of jobs -- well, there's no way to measure that, is there? You aren't laid off in the next 18 months? Hey, that's a job the president's tax cut "secured." The little factory down the road is still in business? Hey, that's two dozen more jobs the president "secured" -- we've got millions of 'em! How can anyone prove otherwise? And isn't that the point? Posted 5/27/03. Rick
gets to the point with award-winning commentary twice every week! (Shouldn't
you be telling somebody?)
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Rick Horowitz
