Worst Policy Ever

Bush's tax plan has Broder pissed:

…I asked one of my favorite Republican economics guides what he thought of the new Bush tax plan. He did not mince words. This man — a veteran of the Nixon and Ford administrations and a friend and adviser to many officials in the Reagan and two Bush administrations — said, "It may be the least defensible policy ever." I would amend that slightly: It is probably the most ill-considered since Treasury Secretary John Connally persuaded President Nixon to freeze wages and prices in 1971.

Like that move — designed to help Nixon's reelection in 1972, whatever the damaging long-term consequences — this latest pack of proposals reeks of politics. The proposal to eliminate taxes on dividends — the centerpiece of the plan and the source of more than half its staggering cost — looks like "the wrong reform at the wrong time," my mentor said.

I have a really hard time getting a bead on Broder, but on this occasion, he's dead on.