THE GINGRICH LESSON:

Bush Budget Has a Long Reach: If enacted, the tax and spending plan would be an about-face on a scale of those by Reagan, LBJ. (Peter G. Gosselin, March 9, 2003, LA Times)

Two months after the White House began rolling out its latest budget, the full dimensions of President Bush's new tax and spending plan are finally coming into view, and they are even more sweeping than originally thought.

By linking expenditures forced on the nation by the 2001 terrorist attacks with a blizzard of other measures, Bush has produced a proposal that, if enacted, would result in a governmental about-face as far-reaching as those of Ronald Reagan or Lyndon B. Johnson.

Coupled with his already-approved 2001 cuts, the president's new tax package would make Bush the biggest tax cutter in at least two decades and possibly half a century. He would top even Reagan.

His proposed defense buildup would be bigger in real terms than Johnson's Vietnam buildup, and that's not counting the cost of a war with Iraq and its aftermath.

His plan to revamp Medicaid and other programs Washington runs jointly with the states would be, in the words of a former Nixon administration budget official, "one of the biggest pullbacks in federal responsibility we've ever seen." [...]

Part of the reason that analysts have been so slow to come to grips with the dimensions of the administration's new budget is that Bush and his key aides have chosen not to trumpet the boldness of many of their proposals, especially some of the most controversial. Officials acknowledge as much in comments about their plan.

Because he talked out loud about what they were trying to do so much, Newt Gingrich mase it easy to scare people about the "Republican Revolution of 1994". Because he's disciplined and undersells what he's doing, Mr. Bush was able to sneak through things like the voucherization of public education. Maybe you can teach the Stupid Party new tricks every once in awhile. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2003 12:53 PM