Bipartisan Posturing

IN THE name of partisan advancement the staff position endorses a flawed compromise budget package.

Raising taxes to make it seem they're doing something about the deficit may be a wise (if cynical) political move, but it does little to combat the mess into which the budget process has descended. As the deficit-reduction package of 1982 showed, increases in revenue are rarely used to combat the deficit--they usually end up as a justification for more pork-barrel spending.

The bill has other flaws the staff position ignores completely. Whether or not one thinks that the proposed capital gains cut will help the economy, the current bill does nothing to index capital-gains taxes to inflation, which is basic to the "fairness" that the staff purports to uphold.

Finally, instead of attacking Congress and the Bush Administration for continuing the last-minute federal budget crunch tradition the staff buys politicians' excuses that a budget must be passed now. The country will not, however, grind to a halt if Congress fails to pass the current bill by Friday. Congress will simply have to pass another emergency spending bill, as it has so many times before. It should do so if realistic cuts do not appear by Friday.

We should tell Congress and the President that "lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part," not simply nod our heads and side with cynical election-year tactics.