NYT editorial: The Tax Debate That Isn’t

If there’s one issue on which Republican presidential hopefuls should feel vulnerable, it’s taxes. The Bush tax cuts, more than any other policy, are crippling the government financially.

From 2002 to 2011, forgone revenue from the cuts will account for 37 percent of the federal budget’s descent into the red, according to the Congressional Budget Office. War and defense spending come next, producing 30 percent of the deterioration, followed by domestic spending at 11 percent.

With revenue falling short year after year, federal borrowing from the public has mushroomed since 2001, by 53 percent, to $5.1 trillion, compared with a 2 percent increase during the Clinton years. American taxpayers must repay the borrowed money with interest, which means fewer federal dollars to spend on everything else for decades to come, including health care, infrastructure repair, emergency response, chemical plant security and alternative energy.

And yet, each of the Republican primary candidates act as though President Bush’s record on taxes has been a smashing success and prominently and proudly tout their tax policies — which boil down to a call for ever lower taxes, primarily through extending all of those same Bush tax cuts beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of 2010.

For Democratic candidates, in contrast, taxation is the issue that dare not speak its name. With the exception of John Edwards, none of the Democratic candidates list “taxes” under “issues” on their official Web sites. Hillary Clinton buries various tax proposals in a category labeled “Strengthening the Middle Class,” while most of Barack Obama’s tax ideas are under “Fighting Poverty.” Even the also-running candidates subsume tax issues under broad, bland headings.

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