The Week

National Review, April 30, 2001

George W. Bush has now won Florida more times than Lawton Chiles.

By a narrow margin, the Senate voted for a budget resolution that shrinks President Bush's tax cut from $1.6 trillion to $1.2 trillion. This was a defeat, but one that needs to be put in perspective. Bush's tax cuts have always enjoyed more support when presented as specific policies-reductions in tax rates, an end to the marriage penalty, etc.- than as an abstract number. The budget resolution, however, contained only the $1.6 trillion number, not the policies. When the Senate does vote on the policies, the president will almost certainly get more votes. Democrats are resisting voting for tax cuts for as long as they can, but in the end many of them will want to vote for a tax-cut bill. And if the Senate vote was disappointing, it also provided some welcome clarity to the debate. Three northeastern Republicans-Jeffords of Vermont, Chafee of Rhode Island, and Specter of Pennsylvania-voted against the president because they want the federal government to have more money to spend. Jeffords, for example, wants to make funding for disabled schoolchildren (and, in practice, "disabled" schoolchildren) a federal entitlement. Opponents of the tax cut have been claiming that they would prefer to pay down the national debt. But the money taken away from the tax cut in the budget resolution was allocated for new spending, not for debt reduction. Opposition to the tax cut is a direct function of enthusiasm for federal spending.

Opponents of the estate tax say that it should be eliminated because, among other things, it is a form of double taxation: The money in estates was already subject to income tax when it was made. Writing in Slate, Michael Kinsley attempts to debunk this argument. He uses the example of a businessman much of whose fortune derives from a stock transfer. That transfer is not taxed. So when the businessman dies, the estate tax would hit that wealth for the first time. But Kinsley ignores the corporate income tax. The value of a stock reflects the future earnings of a company after it pays its taxes. Even without an estate tax, the government does get a bite at the apple. And there are arguments against the estate tax in addition to questions of multiple taxation. The tax reduces incentives to save and invest and generates large compliance costs. Some analyses suggest that the estate tax is so economically harmful that it costs the government more money than it raises. There are plenty of good reasons to ax the tax, and President Bush should stand firm in his resolve to do so.

A funny thing happened on the way to Senate passage of campaign- finance reform-the case for it was all but abandoned. Liberal columnists Michael Kinsley, David Broder, and Richard Cohen all criticized McCain-Feingold for its unconstitutional restrictions on political advertising. Indeed, even the bill's sponsors say that a provision added on the Senate floor beefing up the ad restrictions will be tossed out by the courts. What public good is supposedly served by this constitutional brinkmanship is unclear. McCain-Feingold does little to remedy the chief problem in the financing of campaigns, which is the sheer amount of time that candidates must spend raising money. Instead, it defunds the political parties and makes the lives of individual incumbents easier, by making it cheaper for them to buy TV ads, arming them against millionaire challengers, and shielding them from critical ads by outside groups. The bill will probably pass Congress. There are all sorts of tactical political considerations that suggest Bush should sign McCain-Feingold, and only one reason for him to veto it: It would be the right thing to do.

Here is Hendrik Hertzberg in the January 15 New Yorker: "Various consortia of leading national and Florida newspapers are examining scores of thousands of disputed and/or uncounted ballots. It will be many weeks before the results of these tabulations are known. And it is theoretically possible that they will validate Bush's victory, just as it is theoretically possible that, on account of random Brownian motion, all the molecules of air in one of the counting rooms will rush to a corner and the counters will be asphyxiated. But it's not likely. What is likely is that the independent counts will demonstrate that, no matter what standard is used, Florida, and therefore the Presidency, was unjustly awarded." Well, actually, the counts have shown exactly the opposite. Bush won Florida under every method for recounting used by the state's various canvassing boards. But the Democrats are loath to give up their line on Florida even now. They insist that a mythical Gore victory can still be found in the "over-votes," which no one, including the recount-happy Florida supreme court, wanted to count at the time; in the mistakes prompted by the Palm Beach butterfly ballot, which was perfectly legal and printed in newspapers prior to Election Day; and in the suppression of black votes by roadblocks, which is simply a poisonous lie. The media recounts should provide powerful ammunition in the ongoing battle over "stolen" Florida. In the meantime: All hail random Brownian motion!