On a broad range of issues, Americans are finding President Bush and the corporate elite in his circle out of touch with problems gripping families and the nation.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll this week shows public disapproval of the president growing—50 percent on performance; 64 percent on his handling of Social Security; 56 percent on handling of Iraq; 57 percent on the economy; 54 percent on energy.
Now this White House may be on the verge of making its worst policy decision yet—proposing to end so-called "tax breaks" that benefit the American middle class.
High among recommended deletions by the Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform are mortgage interest deductions on taxes; child tax credits; deductions for charitable donations; and businesses taking employee health insurance as an expense.
Yes, these deductions soak up billions of dollars that otherwise would head to Treasury coffers. But they're on the tax books for an obvious reason—to help American wage earners through the increasingly difficult job of maintaining homes and raising families on incomes that are less certain today than ever.
The recommendation to end employee health insurance as a business expense is an especially cruel, unnecessary and misnamed "reform."
Without that as a business expense, many companies would simply decline or could not afford to provide the perk for workers, who then would be forced to take to the streets looking for insurance with far costlier premiums.
The probability is that many simply would go without insurance, as millions already do. The nation would soon find a pitiable spectacle of struggling middle class families demanding government health care—or worse, going without.
Imagine the howl if the president's advisors suggested that the expense of corporate jets be eliminated as a business deduction.
President Bush claims "reforms" are needed to shore up the nation's finances. Yet, he showed no such anxiety when frittering away the huge budget surplus he inherited from President Clinton with enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and an $80 billion-a-year military expedition to Iraq.
Ending "tax breaks" for working families should be the last order of business for a president who has yet to take decisive measures to slow the drain of U.S. jobs overseas, to control the record trade deficit that costs the nation more debt, to shrink the outflow of energy dollars to foreign oil producers with a sensible conservation program, and to calculate when the United States will end the billions of dollars pouring into Iraq.
Bush and his vaunted team of managers can do better. Sticking it to the middle class isn't the answer to the nation's budget woes.
