Mr. O'Neill was there with budget director Mitch Daniels and National Economic Council director Larry Lindsey to explain the president's tax plan. Toward the conference's end, questions were raised that generated philosophical answers. Mr. Lindsey answered by coming in at the other end. The rich are going to end up paying a larger share of the tax. They will pay 64.1 percent of the taxes under the President's program.
Percentages can be playful entities, and the questioner instantly prodded the director.
That is the committee on whose findings both parties rely in making their projections, so that all Mr. Lindsey would say was that the income taxes that would be paid under the Bush plan would fall more heavily than under existing codes on the rich. Well, if the tax burden is reduced, say, by 10 percent, with the poorest being the principal beneficiaries, then those who are paying at the higher level are likely to increase the percentage of the whole. But this invited a look into the intricacy of the whole tax question, and one correspondent wanted to know what it costs us to reduce taxes, in that to do so delays paying back the debt. One dollar's reduced debt load means, say, five cents of interest payments on the debt. Therefore , a tax cut of a dollar not only deprives the government of a dollar, it deprives it also of the relief it would enjoy of five cents' interest no longer due.