I’m all for fiscal discipline, and Lord knows I’ve been critical of Bush for lacking such discipline in the past. But the rather modest tax relief proposed by Republicans and discussed by Hilzoy, below, is hardly undisciplined. Yes, the proposed poultry-litter biofuels tax “relief” probably ain’t worth the crap it’s derived from, but the rest of the breaks and extensions are defensible. Indeed, when did tax breaks for business R&D become verboten? Who creates the jobs and does the research in this day and age?
With that out of way, and segueing to the ObWi-meta (for the benefit of the new visitors and lurkers): (1) As apparent from the above, the ObWi Five are quite varied in their political views (a Hilzoy is not an Edward is not a Moe is not a Sebastian is not a me) and (2) Moe Lane founded this blog on the notion that people of different political views can get along — and may even be able to agree on certain things (shocker!) — if they simply sit for a moment and respectfully discuss their differences. So jump into the discussion — comments are the lifeblood of this blog.
(It may seem somewhat ironic, then, that I’ve closed comments on this thread. We ObWi Ninjas move in mysterious ways. Should you feel the need to rage against me, however, you may still read Hilzoy’s post and respond there.)