Clinton's heist, Bush's cut

It was another amusing week in D.C. It was a long time coming, but after
eight years of holding their collective tongue in check the editorial writers
at the Washington Post finally let loose with a truthful portrayal of the
Clintons: "They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and
tawdry come to mind. But they don't begin to do it justice."

That was two days after the Post reported that Bill and his charming missus
had piled the van with furniture that was donated to the White House, not
donated to them personally. Hey, when you're dealing with two life-long
freeloaders, it takes a village to furnish the new digs!

The Post listed these as the items with which the Clintons absconded, along
with the names of the donors: "$19,900, an easy chair, two sofas, and an
ottoman from Steve Mittman, New York; $3,650, kitchen table and four chairs
from Lee Ficks, Cincinnati; $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe, High Point, N.C.;
$1,170 lamps from Stuart Schiller, Hialeah, Fla.; $1,000 needlepoint rug from
David Martinous, Little Rock." No word yet on the toilet tissue and light
bulbs.

Steve Mittman set the record straight about the ottoman, two sofas and the
easy chair, items he donated from his family-owned furniture business: "When
we've been asked to donate, it was always hyphenated with the words, 'White
House.' To us, it was not a donation to a particular person."

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Widow Joy Ficks, whose late husband Lee headed Ficks Reed Company, said she
thought the "custom-finished rattan chairs and breakfast table" would remain
at the White House as the people's belongings: "We gave it to the White
House. I wondered what happened to it." The same thing that happened to our
nuclear secrets, Kathleen Willey's cat, the billing records, Vince Foster's
files and everything that wasn't nailed down on the Boeing 747 as it carried
Bill and his sycophants to New York after Bush's inauguration.

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, prune-face Maxine Waters went nuts after a white
man was put in charge of the Democratic Party ("I have in my hands a list of
white people …") and poor Tom Daschle started howling about Republicans
getting free luxury cars while America's Les Miserables Democrats are stuck
trying to patch up their old clunkers.

"You know," said Senate Minority Leader Daschle, "if you make over $300,000 a
year, this tax cut means you get to buy a new Lexus. If you make $50,000 a
year, you get to buy a muffler on your used car."

You know, what Daschle didn't say is that the guy buying the Lexus is
spending his own money, not a federal hand-out. Additionally, Sen. Daschle
didn't bother to mention that "the rich" will continue to pick up a highly
disproportionate share of the tab each year to keep the federal Leviathan on
track, with or without the Bush tax cut.

The top-earning 1 percent of families (annual incomes of $297,000 and more),
for example, earn 15 percent of total national income and pay 34 percent of
all federal income taxes. Similarly, the top 5 percent (incomes of $145,000
and more) earn 32 percent of the income and pay 52 percent of the taxes. In
the same way, the top 10 and 25 percent pay, respectively, 63 and 82 percent
of all income taxes. All told, the top half pays 96 percent of all federal
income taxes while the bottom half picks up 4 percent of the tab.

The rich, clearly, are not the group that's getting the free ride, contrary
to the red meat rhetoric that's tossed into the ring by class warriors like
Daschle. The game Mr. Daschle plays is one of exciting envy, pointing to
shiny new LX-470s and crappy old mufflers, seeking to divert attention away
from the fact that we all pay too much in taxes, that taxes have grown faster
than incomes for the past eight years, that the federal budget has exploded
to over 17 times its 1960 size, after adjusting for inflation, and that
non-defense discretionary federal spending this year, in an economy with
near-zero growth, is set to jump another 13 percent.

Simply put, we're at the point where our tax burden averaged out to $10,298
per person last year -- $7,026 in federal taxes and $3,272 in state and
local taxes. Add the price of regulations and government-sponsored litigation
and we're half-socialized. Altogether, it's a tab for government, as Doug
Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, puts it, that "dwarfs
everything else in people's budgets: shelter ($5,833); health care ($3,829);
food ($2,693); transportation ($2,568); recreation ($1,922); and clothing
($1,404)."

Bush's solution? Double the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000, phase out
the "death tax," reduce the "marriage penalty tax," and cut income tax rates
across-the-board: drop the two top tax brackets of 36 and 39.6 percent to 33
percent, cut the 28 and 31 brackets to 25 percent, and drop the bottom rate
of 15 percent to 10 percent.

Daschle's answer? Grab the wallet of anyone who can buy an LX-470 with his
own money.