FUZZY MATH: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan.

• Author: Shapiro, Walter
• Position: Review

FUZZY MATH: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan by Paul Krugman W.W. Norton & Company, $17.00

THE MORNING AFTER A SUPINE Congress passed the Bush tax-cut bill, Paul Krugman took refuge in the greatest privilege of a newspaper columnist--the immediate ability to fulminate, to fume, to foam, to froth, to fret, and to work oneself into a frenzy in print. Until the final legislation took shape, Krugman declared in his New York Times column, "I thought that the fraudulence of the tax plan would take a few months to become totally obvious. But I underestimated the smirking contempt of the tax cutters for the public's intelligence."

Krugman, in his rightful contempt for this "abomination," made another small miscalculation. Less than two weeks before the bill was rushed to President George W. Bush for his triumphant signature (the president dropped his pen during the ceremony), Krugman published a 128-page screed against the tax bill. Talk about a book with the shelf life of fresh-caught scrod. But there is no need for this slim volume to become pulped non-fiction. The columnist-economist (as strange a hyphenated professional existence as, say, an actress-botanist) is such an artful explainer that it doesn't really matter that this book is already past its pull date. For what Krugman really offers is a toxic-waste-dump tour of the dubious premises that contaminate all Bush-era economic thinking, from the administration's deliberately parsimonious budget to the continuing shell games over the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

Even as a devoted student of the fiscal analyses by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Citizens for Tax Justice, I found Krugman's book brimming with statistics and arguments that I had not read elsewhere. To cite one telling example, which refutes conservative claims that rapacious federal bureaucrats are draining the Treasury dry, non-defense discretionary spending has, since 1986, grown at a slower rate than the economy as a whole. What we regard as the government--the Education Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Immigration and Naturalization Service--has been under-funded for 15 years. As Krugman puts it, "If you think that we suffer from a severe case of big government you should be aware that even civilian discretionary spending is lower today as a share of the economy than it has been since Dwight Eisenhower--yes, Eisenhower--was president."

In outlining his philosophical...