Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

re "President put himself in Iraq corner with tax cuts" (EJ Dionne, Houston Chronicle, 12/16)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/4406834.html

E.J. Dionne believes he can solve a real war by fomenting a domestic class war. His arguments about tax cuts hurting the war effort are wrong-headed in many critical ways:

First, Dionne assumes that it is impossible to redirect money from other parts of government (a bridge to nowhere, for example?) toward defense spending. Second, he assumes that if there were more money today, we would have a different military today, missing the fact that changes to any large organization and particularly the military take many years to enact. (Just ask Donald Rumsfeld.) Third, Dionne forgets that every major tax cut in US history has not only increased revenue to the government but has also make the tax code more progressive.

Most importantly, Dionne gets the issue exactly backwards when comparing tax increases to “extending other people’s tours”. The soldiers who are risking their lives for us daily are volunteers. Yes, longer military tours are difficult and dangerous, but at the end of the day, that is their job, a job they willingly signed up for. Conversely, tax hikes are imposed on citizens, and, if Dionne had his way, they are imposed on the people who already pay a massively disproportionate share of income taxes.

Everything Dionne argues about the relationship between Bush’s tax cuts and the war in Iraq is wrong both in theory and in practice. Attacking the heart of the American economy is no way to help our war effort.