Making the tax cuts permanent for all taxpayers, regardless of income, would cost $3.1 trillion over the next 10 years and inflate the national debt to 82 percent of GDP. This would be the highest level since 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, and well above the average debt-to-GDP ratio of the last 50 years of 37 percent. The current ratio is about 57 percent.
What happens if there's another enormous recession or another war or some unforeseen disaster requiring an expensive government response?
Part of the rationale for the Bush team was to make it impossible for the next Democratic president to do business, crippling his or her presidency. The "starve the beast" strategy -- or as Bush called it, "a fiscal straight-jacket."
That's exactly what we're witnessing now. Just when the president needs to spend money on stimulating the economy, he's handcuffed by the overwhelmingly huge deficit impact of the Bush tax cuts. So the Republicans can screech about how the president, 1) isn't stimulating the economy, and 2) the deficit is out of control -- without any acknowledgment of the fact that the Bush recession, the Bush wars and the Bush tax cuts are the bulk of the deficit. The straight-jacket.