The Democrats’ Cautious Tiptoe Around the President’s Tax Cuts

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
New York Times

WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 — President Bush is all but daring Democratic leaders to attack his signature tax cuts as they take over Congress. But Democrats, perhaps to his frustration, are having none of it.

In an opening salvo on Wednesday, Mr. Bush proclaimed that he would present a budget next month that manages to project a balanced budget by 2012 while permanently extending more than $1 trillion in tax cuts.

“It is also a fact that our tax cuts have fueled robust economic growth and record revenues,” Mr. Bush wrote in an op-ed article for The Wall Street Journal. “We met our goal of cutting the deficit in half three years ahead of schedule.”

The implicit message, which Republican lawmakers reinforced later, was that their tax cuts were popular with voters, that Republicans had proven the economic benefits of tax cuts and that Democrats would court disaster if they even hinted at rolling them back or repealing them.

But even as Democratic leaders continue to accuse Mr. Bush of having a reckless fiscal policy, they have refused to discuss dismantling his tax cuts or even to engage in a debate with him about the best way to stimulate economic growth.

“It’s always the same old tired line with them — ‘Tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend,’ ” said Senator Kent Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “We’re not going there.”

(The rest is here.)