BIGGEST. TAX INCREASE. EVER. As everybody's pointing out, the Republicans' characterization of letting some of the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010 as the Democrats enacting "the biggest tax increase in American history" is, of course, a lie, both on the semantic point of what constitutes a hike and on the more concrete point that the Republicans drafted and signed those expirations into law in the first place. But here comes John Boehner with an awesome Wall Street Journal op-ed today decrying the Democrats' "back to the future" budget resolution featuring "the largest tax hike in American history." This is "back to the future," of course, because it's an echo of Bill Clinton's dreaded tax hike of 1993, which Boehner, like every right-winger, continues to invoke as if most people associate the 1990s with tax-stifled economic misery. (He also, of course, gets in a requisite pot-and-kettle dig at the Iraq supplemental bill's pork.) Boehner ends hilariously by conceding that, while "we Republicans could have done a much better job while we were in the majority" on matters of fiscal discipline, there remain "very real differences on Capitol Hill when it comes to fiscal responsibility. Democrats think we can spend our way out of every problem; Republicans will continue to work to help fiscal sanity triumph over fiscal recklessness."
Meanwhile, Sawicky reminds us that the more compelling critique to be made about the Dems' budget, both this year and no doubt for several years to come, is that it's all too married to notions of "fiscal sanity" and hamstrung by a reluctance to raise either spending or revenues [Max corrects] significantly.
--Sam Rosenfeld
