The chances that the Grand Old Party will actually succeed in providing just the right level of incentives to stop a recession are about as real as any fairy tale.
Economists generally tend to believe that tax cuts can make an economy more competitive.
No one even knows exactly what the plan will cost, as hearings this week demonstrated. If the economy turns up before he settles with the House and Senate on a plan, which it looks like it may do, the Bush argument that he is precision bombing a potential recession will look pretty silly. That's too bad, since there are plenty of good reasons for tax cuts that range beyond economic fine-tuning. One of them is the moral argument. The moral argument says the same standards that hold in the rest of society should hold where taxes are concerned.