George Will op-echo - questions tax cuts for the rich

Honestly, outside of a few predictable and prescriptive support letters and some partisan paid advertisements, there's not much in the way of enthusiams for the Republican's tax cuts for the rich reforms. This echo is excerpts from a George Will opinion:

"...legislation’s drafters anticipate, indeed proclaim, is that Congress will not allow (a recession) to happen what the legislation says, with a wink..."~ George Will

Conservative opinion writer George Will is skeptical about the wrong minded Republican initiative to "get something done", even if doing so creates political division and nobody knows the outcome.

George Will: Nobody knows if a tax cut bill built on hope will stir growth

George Will is a conservative columnist who writes for The Washington Post

Amid uncertainty about whether our run of economic gain will stay, or whether debt will cripple us, is a tax cut is worth a try?

The Republicans’ tax legislation is built on economic projections that are as confidently as they are cheerfully made concerning the legislation’s shaping effect on the economy over the next 10 years. 

This claim to prescience (George Will speak..."the fact of knowing something before it takes place"); fore knowledge must amaze alumni of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, which were 85 and 158 years old, respectively, when they expired less than 10 years ago in the unanticipated Great Recession.

The predictions of gross domestic product and revenue growth assume, among many other things, continuation of the current expansion. It began in June 2009, and has been notable for its anemia relative to other post-1945 expansions: Its average annual growth rate has been 2 percent; theirs, 4.3 percent. 

But it also has been remarkably durable. It is 102 months old; the average since after World War II is 58 months. Unless the business cycle has been repealed, a recession is almost a certainty during the 10-year window for which the tax bill has been tailored.

What the legislation’s drafters anticipate, indeed proclaim, is that Congress will not allow to happen what the legislation says, with a wink, will happen. 

So, this might mark the historic moment when Washington decided that it no longer will bother to blush. The legislation says the tax reductions for individuals will expire by 2025. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, however, says “we have every expectation that down the road Congress will extend them.” 

Of course Congress will. The phantom expiration is an $800 billion fudge, a cooking of the books in order to cram the tax bill into conformity with arcane parliamentary procedures that make the measure immune to filibuster. We have been down this road before: For the same reason, some George W. Bush tax cuts of 2001 were scheduled to expire at the end of 2010; 82 percent of them (measured by revenue) did not.
In 2002, when Dick Cheney (the former Vice President) – a strict constructionist, but not of economic data – said, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” the publicly held national debt was 33 percent the size of GDP; today, it is 75 percent. At some point, the debt’s size matters, and we seem determined to learn the hard way where that point is.

This tax (ie "tax cuts for the rich") legislation, is an amalgam of earnest hoping and transparent make-believe; it's a serious lunge for sustained 3 percent economic growth.

Without this, the economy will buckle beneath the strain of 10,000 of the elderly each day becoming eligible for Social Security and Medicare. The Republicans purport to know how changed tax incentives will affect corporations’ and individuals’ decisions, and how those decisions will radiate through the economy. 

Republicans do not know – nobody does.

Economics is a science of incentives, and like all sciences it is never “settled.” Both Republican and Democratic sides, with their thumping predictions, have given hostages to the future, which will deal harshly with some. Perhaps most. Possibly all of them.