Forgive My Skepticism, Barack

Barack Obama unveiled his middle-class tax cut today. It totals about $80 billion, according to the campaign. People who don't itemize, for instance, could still get the mortgage interest deduction. And seniors making less than $50,000 would pay no income tax. (Why, I ask, should they get that when persons under 65 who make $50K must pay federal income tax and are not guaranteed health insurance and prescription drug benefits under Medicare?)

Color me skeptical. I lived through the 1992 campaign where Bill Clinton promised a middle-class tax cut. This was the central issue dividing the Arkansas governor from the late Senator Paul Tsongas in the primaries. Tsongas said Clinton couldn't pay for the tax cut and he was basically right. Just after taking office, Clinton gave a prime time speech in which he announced that the budget deficit was worse than he thought and the tax cut would have to wait. It never really happened over the next eight years although the working poor got a nicely expanded version of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Maybe the Illinois Senator can pay for this new tax cut should he take office in January 2009 but I suspect, like Clinton, he'd wind up reneging on the deal.