What’s "Courageous" When It Comes to Taxing Investment Income?
Today’s New York Times accuses President Bush of getting things “exactly backwards” by exhorting Congress to demonstrate political courage by resisting the urge to raise taxes. The politically courageous move, the Times says, would be to raise taxes (i.e., to refuse to extend the 2003 cuts beyond their expiration date). In particular, the Times calls for brave lawmakers to eliminate the “special low tax rates for investment income,” which “overwhelmingly enrich the rich and will be even harder to justify in the years to come, when, by all reasonable estimates, the country’s financial outlook will have deteriorated further.” It was, the Times says, “Orwellian” for President Bush to suggest that courage would be required to extend the tax cuts on investment income.
