Tax Cuts Mean Little Without Spending Cuts

The battle over President Bush's tax cut proposals is only a small part of the budget problem. Spending is the major problem. Unless spending is reduced, tax cuts mean little. But that's going to be hard to do when members of both parties refuse to be restrained. They are like credit card abusers who, no matter how high the debt, they keep at it because they are addicted.

The real reason the Senate voted to slash the president's tax cut was to keep $311 billion more to spend on their projects. Forget all of the talk about bipartisanship and debt reduction. It doesn't mean a thing.

Senators Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Jim Jeffords of Vermont - both liberals - wanted lots of new spending as their price for supporting their own party's president. Jeffords wanted a massive new federal entitlement program. They didn't get what they asked for and so they made this new president look bad.

Term limits remain the answer to a lot of our problems, including spending.