[Urbane Guerrilla]

An unprincipled and inflationary attack upon the American economy is newish, and unwise, and it's not providing for the general welfare either. And it's something Republicans don't do, for which I'll salute them. Even Nixon's non-conservative wage and price freezes weren't what this is, and were abortive in any case. It was Reagan who managed the successful formula -- and Kennedy preceded him in the same. The laws of economics do not alter with the majority party. (Start reading with Hazlett. I did.)

Of course, we can take the power to levy this tax away from Congress, advising them that the next try had better be a reform that doesn't nationalize a sixth of the economy or anything near it. We have a few years to get that done, at least. Then we can Hope for something more in our pockets than Change.

Nothing in the power to levy taxes says, "magnify the public debt until it destroys the currency," and that is where Washington has been screwing up for a long time. I can't cheer along irresponsibility of that kind; I want good government -- you clearly don't -- and I'm not getting very much. If they wanted something to brag on, they should have kept that one-year Clinton surplus (the existence of which I still rather doubt -- it seemed to have the half-life of some isotopes of californium), achieved without mucking with tax rates, something they are openly contemplating again now. Well, everybody but the Dem Party knows you can't tax your way into prosperity. You prosper by lowering the cost of doing business, and that includes taxation along with everything else.