While we liked much of what President George Bush said last night in his seventh State of the Union Address, the best we can say is: too little, too late.
Yes, the president wants Congress to make permanent several of his tax cuts, many of which played a significant role in boosting economic growth. . . BUT there is something depressingly dissonant about having a president make supply-side arguments for tax cuts but yet make Keynesian arguments for economic stimulus. It gives one the impression that the president never really understood the reason why tax cuts stimulate economic growth. Perhaps this is why the president hasn’t succeeded in selling his tax cuts.
Yes, the president also made some excellent comments about the need for entitlement reform, especially Social Security and Medicare. . . BUT when he tried to reform Social Security, he walked right into a very predictable trap and decided to emphasize benefit cuts rather than the dynamic role of personal accounts. IPI predicted this result and tried to persuade the administration and policymakers of the right strategy on Social Security personal accounts, but it was all in vain. Thus Social Security reform went down in flames—and the administration has never fully recovered.
Yes, it is true the president was more successful—if that’s what you want to call it—with Medicare reform. . . BUT his legislation created the biggest new entitlement since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. To be fair, the legislation has worked much better than many people expected, but wouldn’t the new prescription drug entitlement program have worked just as well if it had been targeted to lower-income seniors with no prescription drug coverage? We’ll never know. What we do know is that he thus alienated millions of his conservative supporters, and did so with a dash of meanness for daring to question his administration. He has now proposed greater means-testing provisions—but it’s hard to take anything back when you’ve already handed people a freebie.
And yes, the president stressed earmark reform. . . BUT forgive us for being skeptical about his lame-duck conversion to budget transparency. It’s not too much to say he was, along with both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, a co-conspirator in an unnecessary explosion of domestic spending. One year of fiscal restraint can’t make up for seven years of spending like a liberal. This president calling for fiscal restraint was almost as funny as Congress giving a standing ovation to earmark elimination.
So, yes, the president has taken some tough stands over the last seven years. But most of those well-intentioned efforts were too little, too late.