Demagogue

In his story about the Bush budget deficits, the Washington Post’s John F. Harris writes:

Rep. Jim Nussle (R-Iowa), the House Budget Committee chairman, maintains that one reason the politics of deficits are different is that the deficits themselves are different. Although he said he agrees that growth in the budget needs to be restrained, the Bush deficits are less troublesome than the deficits that generated such controversy in the late 1980s through the opening of Clinton's second term.

"These (Bush II) deficits were created for deliberate reasons" — to jump-start the economy and pay for war — while those earlier ones were "neglect deficits" that reflected an unwillingness by lawmakers to make responsible choices, Nussle said.

Harris seems to be referring to the Bush tax cut when he uses the phrase "jump-start the economy." In other words, the gist of his article is this: Nussle said the Bush administration pushed for tax cuts knowing full well they would help create deficits.

If Nussle is right, then it means top Bush administration officials were lying about the impact of the tax cuts. Consider this brief exchange from "Meet the Press" (March 2001) between host Tim Russert and White House budget analyst Larry Lindsey:

RUSSERT: "Let me turn to the Bush tax cut as it was proposed and put it on the screen for you. The true costs of the Bush tax cut—this is according to the Senate Democrats … They say the true cost of the Bush tax plan is $2.6 trillion … they say the problem is if you have a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion and you take away money for Social Security, the so-called lockbox as you referred to it, that reduces the (budget) surplus to $3.1 trillion … Now are you guaranteeing that surplus?"
LINDSEY: "Ten-year forecasts are always subject to question. What I can guarantee is that the assumptions behind that are very cautious …"

Lindsey didn’t come right out and explicitly say so, but it’s clear that he was dismissing concerns that the Bush tax cut would wipe out the budget surplus (which then existed).
But here’s the smoking gun.

Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, was asked on the same program weeks earlier about the impact of the president’s tax cut. Russert wanted to know: will the Bush tax cut plan blow through the budget surplus? O’Neill’s response to Russert was unequivocal – no.

O’NEILL: "You know, again, I think people can endlessly make charts and, you know, add numbers and subtract numbers and whatever other magic you want to do. The facts about what the president has proposed are very straightforward. No one disputes that this tax structure that we have right now is going to produce, over the next 10 years, $5.6 trillion worth of surplus."

If Nussle knows that the White House advanced its tax cuts with the deliberate understanding that they would cause deficits, then the Bush administration was publicly lying in early 2001 when it said the tax cut plan would not drain the surplus.

Did it occur to Harris or anyone else at The Post to ask the White House whether Nussle's explanation — about "deficits [being] created for deliberate reasons" — is accurate?

*-Thanks to the Daily Howler for excerpts from the "Meet the Press" interviews – the network’s website doesn’t seem to maintain archives for these 2001 interviews.