It's Clear Bush Tax Cuts Have Hurt Americans Published on Sunday, December 9, 2001 in the Boulder Daily Camera

It's Clear Bush Tax Cuts Have Hurt Americans

by Paul Krugman



Shortly after Sept. 11, George W. Bush interrupted his inveighing against evildoers to crack a joke. Bush had repeatedly promised to run an overall budget surplus at least as large as the Social Security surplus, except in the event of recession, war or national emergency. "Lucky me," he remarked to Mitch Daniels, his budget director. "I hit the trifecta."

Lucky him, indeed. The Enron analogy will soon become a tired cliche, but in this case the parallel is irresistible. Enron management and the administration the company did so much to place in power applied the same strategy: First, use cooked numbers to justify big giveaways at the top. Then, if things don't work out, let ordinary workers who trusted you pay the price. But Enron executives got caught; Bush believes that the events of Sept. 11 will let him off the hook.