By Ezra
The aftermath of Katrina will be expensive. We're talking huge funds to house, to feed, to clothe, to rebuild, to refit, to paint, to restore, to recreate a city and protect its inhabitants. This is a humanitarian disaster on a massive scale, and bringing New Orleans back into the light is going to require an almost unimaginable amount of cash.
But where are we going to get it?
Iraq isn't proving cheap, health costs are exploding, the deficit is soaring, and the administration's fiscal management philosophy has, up till now, been from the Crackhead School of Accounting. So how're we going to pay? Tony Blankley, speaking of Left Right and Center yesterday, said doing so would force some very serious tradeoffs in America life. Health care, he noted, might have to be cut. Urban spending can't coexist with entitlements if we're going to rebuild the drenched areas.
Tony Blankley, you should all know, is a douche. Because what he didn't mention is that taxes can, and should, be raised. Government revenues aren't fixed things, they change in response to tax structures, to fees, to economic cycles, and to phases in the moon. But we can, by and large, control them, raise them, lower them, through tax revenues. Obviously, if we have much to spend on but no money to spend, we should be raising. But with the Senate promising immediate consideration of Estate Tax Repeal or Reform (Reform being the difference between murdering the tax and simply paralyzing it for life), that's looking rather unlikely.
