Bush Tax Cuts: A poison pill monster that has to die

Of all the disasters left behind by the Bush administration – two wars, a banking system that teetered on the edge of collapse, an economy in steep decline – the Bush tax cuts have proven to be a sleeper that may be the biggest disaster of all.

Republican strategist Dan Bartlett smugly said in a recent interview that the tax cuts were a trap for Democrats designed by Bush and the Republicans to detonate on someone else’s watch.

“We knew that, politically, once you get it into law, it becomes almost impossible to remove it,” says Dan Bartlett, Bush’s former communications director. “That’s not a bad legacy. The fact that we were able to lay the trap does feel pretty good, to tell you the truth.”

President Obama produced a firestorm of controversy within his own party when he decided to extend the Bush tax cuts in a compromise with Republicans to get a year’s worth of unemployment insurance for more than 2 million people who are out of work, though nothing for the 99ers, those without incomes who have been  unable to find work after almost two years of being laid off.

Fearing the tax increases that would arise when the bill runs out at midnight 2011, Obama decided to breathe new life into Bush’s poison pill tax cut monster, giving it two more years to wreak havoc, which will then force Obama and the Democrats, with the help of the Tea Party, to take painful chunks out of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation and probably many of Obama’s hard won healthcare reform measures that are only just beginning.  It will be up for renewal again right in the middle of the next presidential election.

The Bush tax cuts failed to produce jobs, and it continues to fail at producing jobs.  It has succeeded in giving the wealthy extra money to move offshore, or to simply save for later investment. It does not circulate through the economy or even trickle down.

But over years, people came to believe the tax cut theology, and besides, who wants to pay more taxes anyway? Its not like roads, bridges, highway, tunnels, electrical grids, transportation or police, fire fighters and teachers need to be paid for. That’s someone else’s responsibility. Many states are poised to jettison such jobs in the new year.

Obama knows – or at least he believes – that  Americans will be in an uproar if the Bush tax cut monster died, and taxes went up.  Half of the tea bagger crowd already thinks Obama and the Democrats have raised their taxes, even though they have not.

With a new lease on life, the tax cut monster is likely to be even bigger and stronger next time around. It will probably become a permanent fixture of the tax code, as  running -scared Democrats will be too afraid to challenge its existence any longer, and Republicans will revel in the compromises Obama or the next president will have to make to continue to  feed  Bush’s monster, which will now belong to them.

With the hours ticking by and legislators eager to go home where they will enjoy a prosperous holiday season,  the House and Senate members are scrambling to keep the monster alive.

Of course, there is a way out – letting the Bush tax cuts expire, killing the monster once and for all. This would force legislators to do their jobs, which is to write (and rewrite) new  tax code legislation.

And there may be hope (if you pardon that word) on the horizon. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has emphatically vowed to filibuster the tax cut compromise. South Carolina senator, “demented” Jim DeMint, unhappy with the scraps thrown to students and the unemployed, want them cut out of the deal altogether, and he too has also pledged to filibuster the compromise.  With both sides finally working together the spirit of bipartisanship,  could Bush’s tax cuts finally end?