Bush makes pitch for making tax cuts permanent

President Bush on Thursday pressed his election-year complaints against ”tax raisers and spenders in Washington,” arguing that failure to make administration-backed tax cuts permanent would raise taxpayers’ bills by billions.

”When you hear people say, ‘Oh, let’s just let the tax cuts expire,’ it’s a tax increase,” Bush said in an event at the White House to promote his economic record. ”It’s a code word for, ‘I’m raising your taxes,’ to increase the amount of money we have to spend here in Washington on new programs, on programs that meet a particular political desire of the appropriators.”

These tax cuts were a big mistake, but now any move to correct that mistake can be attacked simple-mindedly as an increase. mjh