1115.org

On Thursday George Bush gave himself an A for “being fiscally responsible with the people’s money”.

We’re here to explain what he meant, with a little help from dear old Rudee. Along the way, we’ll clear up one of the enduring ideological mysteries of Bush’s reign.

AP to set the stage:

Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said Friday that the alternative minimum tax — which is expected to generate as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years — could be eliminated over the long term by balancing it out with even more tax cuts.

Giuliani’s remarks prompted a bewildered response from his audience of technology executives. Both Republicans and Democrats said they assumed that the candidate must have misspoken as he responded to a question about the tax and its affect the middle class.

But a Giuliani spokeswoman said later that Giuliani meant what he said — tax cuts could replace the lost revenue from the AMT by boosting the overall economy.

“Giuliani is the quintessential supply-sider,” said spokeswoman Maria Comella.

People are laughing at Rudee over this, and they shouldn’t be.

It’s true that “The alternative minimum tax, or AMT, was enacted in 1969 to ensure that a handful of wealthy taxpayers could not exploit a series of loopholes to avoid paying any income taxes.” It’s true that the AMT makes these taxpayers pay higher taxes.

But let’s be fair to Rudee. It’s called “the alternative minimum tax”. Doesn’t that sound like a tax loophole which allows you to minimize your taxes? Anyone could be confused into thinking eliminating the AMT would increase tax collections.

And it’s clear to one and all that that’s what happened here. Rudee doesn’t know what the AMT is, and he confused himself into thinking it’s a tax loophole.

But Rudee wants to insist he wasn’t confused. He wants to insist that what he said makes perfect sense to a “quintessential supply-sider”.

Let’s think about that for a moment: if Rudee knows that eliminating the AMT is a tax cut, and tax cuts increase revenue, then why does he feel the need to do anything to balance the effect of eliminating the AMT?

By the First Law of Voodoo Economics, eliminating the AMT will increase tax revenues, so you don’t need a second tax cut to balance the first.

Now think about this: how on earth would Rudee balance the effect of eliminating the AMT if he wanted to? Reducing taxes doesn’t help; that would only increase revenues further. Increasing taxes is not an option (only Damn Democrats can do that). Which leaves only one choice: increase Government spending.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why George W. Bush — although he is the quintessential conservative — was forced to increase the size of our government. It was the damn tax cuts. The only other option was to let the budget deficit go down. And that just wouldn’t have been fiscally responsible.