As Jonathan Chait points out in The New Republic, President Bush's rhetoric often soars beyond his administration's efforts to implement real policy:
One of the many, many problems with the Bush administration is that its slogans are crafted by powerful and highly competent wordsmiths and strategists, such as Michael Gerson and Karen Hughes, while its domestic polices are crafted by anonymous nobodies like, uh ... say, who is in charge of domestic policy these days, anyway? Thus, Bush frequently finds himself making eloquent pronouncements whose policy ballast is formulated off-the-cuff and discarded just as easily. Early this year, the White House announced a great civilizational commitment to landing on Mars, apparently without consulting any scientists first. Bush declared, "We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own." Or not. Bush failed to mention the proposal in his State of the Union address six days later.
The phrase "compassionate conservatism" comes to mind. That was a good one, wasn't it?
Bush is now talking about "the ownership society" in his campaign speeches. Does it mean anything? Unfortunately, it does, says Chait:
Now that Bush is promising to use his second term to promote an "ownership society," the natural reaction is to lump this new idea in with the "responsibility era," the "compassion agenda," and other pleasant-sounding but mostly empty Bush slogans. In this instance, however, the rhetoric actually refers to some weighty proposals. And, unlike the Mars trip and other schemes, Bush may actually stick with them. Why? Because they share one crucial thing with all the domestic policies he cares about enough to invest real political capital in: they redistribute wealth upward.
Chait then provides some of the details of Bush's proposals for Health Savings Accounts, the privatization of Social Security accounts, and further cuts in taxes on investment income. The upshot is that these policies would disproportionately benefit taxpayers in the higher federal income tax brackets (who will get larger tax breaks than those lower down the income ladder) and increase risk for taxpayers in lower brackets (including those who pay no federal income tax at all).
Following Matt Miller, we might call Bush's vision the let-them-own-cake society.
John Cassidy looks at Bush's tax policies, which are slowly moving us towards a system that taxes wages rather than investment income. The disproportionate benefits of such a scheme to the already affluent should be apparent. After all, lower income people usually have little to no investment income. Furthermore, a flat tax on income seems to be a major policy goal. It's clear how that would also disproportionately benefit the affluent, and it would also lead to great reductions in government spending.
How Republicans intend to restructure the tax code, finance U.S. foreign policy, balance the budget, and deal with the looming threat of retiring baby boomers, well, that doesn't seem to be a part of their agenda.
More: This article by Timothy Noah looks at various Bush administration ideas about taxation. The principle future direction seems to be lower taxes on higher incomes. Who saw that coming?
