Check's in the Mail.

• Author: Lynch, Michael W.
• Position: Analysis of George W. Bush tax cut

How the tax cut went from impossible to inevitable

Shortly after this double-issue lands in your mailbox, so too will a check from the federal government, ranging from $300 for singles to $600 for married folks. It's not a gift from the feds-it's your money, the result of a new 10 percent tax bracket. It's an income tax cut, effective this year.

This wasn't supposed to happen. Just as people "know" Bush is a policy lightweight, they also knew that tax cuts were damn poor politics. According to the conventional wisdom, a tax cut proposal was perhaps necessary in the Republican primaries, to fend off the likes of Steve Forbes. But it was supposed to be a non-starter with the broader public, which would rather have the money invested in schools or light rail. After John McCain opened a can of whoop-ass on the tax-cut-touting Bush during the New Hampshire campaign, beating the Texan 49 percent to 31 percent, press sages declared that even Republicans had no interest in tax cuts. The question many were asking was how Bush-who was known for locking his little mind on one or two issues and pursuing them doggedly--could de-emphasize tax cuts without appearing feckless.

"The broad message coming out of Tuesday's New Hampshire primary is that the primacy of tax cuts in Republican politics has been demolished," declared political analyst Charlie Cook in February 2000. Writing in the influential weekly The National Journal, Cook opined that the Republicans were finished, since as tax cuts go, so goes the GOP: "The only issue that really separated Democrats from Republicans has been taxes. Now, not even Republican primary voters in notoriously tax-averse New Hampshire respond to the siren song of tax cuts the way they used to.

Maybe not, but candidate Bush turned his siren song into a rousing tune, telling voters that it's taxpayers' money, not the government's; that tax cuts are an insurance policy against a slowing economy; and that they provide a greater incentive to work. Listen to the Not-So-Great Communicator himself: "It is not just the amount of taxes that matters, it's also what the economists call a taxpayer's marginal rate: the taxes we pay on every extra dollar we earn," said Bush, outlining his proposal in December 1999. "That rate determines the incentives to work."

"In my judgment, what's risky is to leave a lot of unspent money in Washington because guess what's going to happen," he argued in the January 10 Republican primary debate...