Frum on GOP Tax Cut Mantra

David Frum of New Majority nails it again when he critiques proposed GOP solutions (you guessed it--more tax cuts!) to our current economic woes. He notes that job losses in the current recession outnumber job creation throughout the Bush administration, citing this as powerful evidence that the Bush tax cuts failed to deliver on their promised benefit.

So here is a proposition for Republicans and conservatives. Our policy response to the challenges of 2001 was a reprise of our policy response to the crisis of 1981. But whereas the 1981 crisis was a supply-side crisis, marked by slumping productivity, dwindling output, and excess monetary creation, the 2001 problem had very different contours. So we really should not have been surprised if measures that had worked well 20 years before worked less well under very different circumstances 20 years later.

Now the nation faces a third crisis, potentially almost as severe as 1981, but different again in type and nature. And conservatives face a challenge of our own: Can we develop policies this time that respond to the specific needs of the moment? Or are we doomed—like a once-platinum rock band—to reprise forever our greatest hits of three decades ago?

--Ballard Burgher