VAN HELSING VS. THE WALKING DEAD:

Bush Yet to Flesh Out Domestic Agenda: Many likely small steps in taxes and savings would add up to 'radical change,' analysts say. (Warren Vieth, August 23, 2004, LA Times)

With only a week to go before the Republican National Convention, the lack of details in President Bush's second-term domestic policy agenda has left some conservative activists worrying aloud about the Vision Thing.

But analysts from both parties make the case that although the individual pieces of Bush's emerging agenda may not appear that weighty or new, they still add up to something big.

Bundled within overlapping themes of tax reform and economic "ownership," they say, are initiatives that would, if enacted, move the country toward fundamentally different systems of taxation and social insurance.

Wage income would be taxed at something close to a flat rate instead of today's graduated rates. Investment income would be largely tax-free. And individuals would shoulder more of the risk for their retirement, in return for potentially greater rewards.

"If you tell liberals that we're going to have a flat tax, that's like putting a cross in front of a vampire: They start cringing," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative fundraising organization. "By doing these things in little bitty steps at a time, it's sort of like a slippery slope, but in the right direction."

"What they're trying to do is a radical transformation of the tax code," said Peter Orszag, a former economic advisor to President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution. "They're trying to do it in little pieces rather than all at once. The sum of all those pieces would be a radical change."

Amazing what you can achieve if you're patient and persistent.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2004 1:17 PM