Despite Senate leader Tom Daschle's new feistiness, the Democrats are painting themselves into a dangerous corner on the economy. The Democrats' story goes like this:
Bush's last big tax cut - a 10-year, $1.35 trillion cut approved last June - was very foolish. It significantly contributed to escalating budget deficits and hurt the economy. The tax cut, Daschle declared last week, ''probably made the recession worse.''
Democrats, by contrast, are responsible fiscal stewards who are offering a moderate, temporary stimulus with both targeted tax cuts and prudent spending.
This sounds good, but it leaves the Democrats offering not much of an alternative. And their facts are open to challenge.
A $1.35 trillion tax cut over 10 years was certainly terrible policy. Nearly half of it will go to the richest 1 percent - public money that could have bought health care, child care, or decent schools.
But most of that tax cut hasn't taken effect yet. The Republicans craftily timed it so it would hit mostly after 2004. That way, there would be scant impact on the budget until Bush, presumably, was safely reelected.
So when Democrats try to blame Bush for this year's escalating deficit, Republicans can easily demonstrate that most of the current fiscal deterioration is the result of the recession.
That, of course, misses the real point, which is that the big tax cut misallocates national resources for the long term. Worse, instead of making national priorities the issue, Democrats make deficits the issue.
The Democrats are also loath to draw the logical conclusion that most of the 10-year tax cut should be repealed. Bush has vowed that this would occur ''over my dead body,'' a vow reminiscent of his fathers famous braggadocio (''Read my lips, no new taxes''). But the Democrats should take up Bush II's challenge.
Faced with a deteriorating budgetary picture in 1991, Democrats forced Bush I to eat his words. And Bill Clinton forced through a tax increase on the richest 2 percent in 1993 and lived to tell the tale.
Indeed, the Clinton tax hike prefigured eight straight years of economic growth and restored some social outlay. Sometimes repealing a tax cut is good policy and good politics.
But instead of offering different national priorities to rally workaday citizens, the party of the common American has turned itself into the party of accountants, stressing budget balance but without either temporary deficits or repeal of the Bush adminstration's tax cut.
''I have not heard one Democrat say he or she wants to raise taxes,'' the House Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt, crowed last week. Well, as a card-carrying Democrat, let me be the first.
(In fact, several Democrats in Congress, both liberal and moderate, have suggested that the 10-year tax giveaway should be repealed or deferred as a whole or in part. These include such liberals as Barney Frank and Hillary Clinton and moderates such as Ellen Tauscher of California.)
Unfortunately, the party leadership, captive to both a handful of conservative Democrats and to the caution of its pollsters, considers repealing of the tax cut a political third rail. Even worse, they think voters back Democrats to deliver budget surpluses.
Let's recall for a moment why there is a Democratic Party. In the big picture, Democrats have one big thing to offer the electorate that most Republicans reject:
The Democrats are willing to use government to give ordinary citizens things that private markets can't deliver - secure health care, safe airways, consumer protections, clean environment, educational opportunities. And there are only two ways to finance social outlay - taxing and public borrowing.
By refusing to take on Bush's tax giveaway, which squandered well over a trillion dollars in public resources, the Democrats cut off one leg. And by rejecting deficits, even in recession, they cut off the other.
Though Daschle has been talking about a stimulus package, this fiscal trap reduces him to dickering over a few billion dollars. It fell to George W. Bush to point out that national deficits are defensible in war, recession, or national emergency, ''and we have all three.''
The Democrats' embrace of surpluses was supposed to keep Bush from daring to propose a big tax cut. Associating surpluses with saving Social Security was supposed to elect Al Gore. None of it worked.
The Democrats need a new playbook. At this rate, their main tactic for next November will be to pray for a deeper recession. And while the economy is soft, it won't be soft enough to rescue the Democrats in the absence of a bolder message.
