Those tax cuts are a real piece of work

Jonathan Chait

February 5, 2006

'UNFORTUNATELY, just as we are seeing how our tax cuts have created jobs and opportunity, some in Washington want to repeal the tax relief," President Bush says in one of his standard speech lines.

Actually, lots of people outside Washington want to repeal the tax cuts as well. But because I happen to live in Washington and want to repeal the tax cuts, maybe I should explain our thinking to the president.

We're running deficits of more than $300 billion even at the peak of an economic expansion. The Republicans have no plans to cut spending anywhere close to the level we would need to make a dent in that figure. If we can't end tax cuts now, when can we? We couldn't cancel the tax cuts three years ago because the economy was in a recession. Now we can't cancel them because the economy is growing. I'm starting to suspect there's never going to be a good time.