The Man Who Has Everything

By the way if you are still down about the Republican ascendancy you might consider picking up "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads." Really great live album from a band who pretty much knew the score. Songs like "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" or "Cities" or "Don't Worry About the Government" may pick you up a bit.

Anyway Bruce Bartlett takes on the question of what President Bush should focus on in his second term and makes some surprisingly good points. First of all, President Bush doesn't have a specific mandate to accomplish any specific reforms in the areas of Social Security or Taxation.

Comments by Bush and his aides indicate their belief that he has a "mandate" to act on tax and Social Security reform. However, long experience shows that unless a president has campaigned on something fairly specific, Congress can easily ignore his mandate, chalking it up to personal popularity or some other factor unrelated to policy.

A mean-spirited person (such as myself) might point out that President Bush's lack of a specific mandate stems from his apparently successful decision to run against President Kerry rather than to put forward specific plans of his own.

Not surprisingly, Bartlett proposes that President Bush focus on fixing up Taxes and ignore Social Security. On the more surprising side, it turns out Bruce Bartlett has heard of the deficit.

. . . the tax system is under severe pressure. Expiring provisions need to either be made permanent or excised from the code, the Alternative Minimum Tax demands a permanent fix, and something desperately needs to be done to help the Internal Revenue Service administer a tax system that is increasingly incomprehensible and too easy evaded.

I also believe that sooner or later Bush is going to be forced to deal meaningfully with the budget deficit and that higher revenues will necessarily have to be part of a budget agreement. Although he has stated publicly that he sees no need for higher revenues, I believe that financial markets will force Bush to act, as they did for Reagan.

President Reagan was smart enough to adjust his tax policies. We'll have to see if President Bush is that smart.