Bush winning the tax battle

President Dubya moved a step closer to achieving his much-heralded campaign pledge -- across-the-board tax cuts for every taxpayer.

On April 6 the U.S. Senate passed a budget resolution, 65-35, that included the major portion of the president's tax cuts -- almost $1.3 trillion -- as well as an extra $85 billion consented for immediate relief in the form of rebates for either retroactive rate reductions or for a one-time refund.

Since the House has already passed its own budget resolution, which provides for the entire $1.6 billion tax cut requested by the Bush administration, the measure will now be deliberated by a conference committee of senators and representatives whose charge it is to work out disparities.

Why is Bush winning? Because even a down-the-middle compromise would establish the tax relief package at $1.45 trillion, quite a success given the desperate and maniacal opposition thrown at the president since during the campaign last year. Both the political left and its liberal media cohorts have relentlessly pummeled the issue as "tax cuts for the rich," "tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent."

But the sullen socialists can't overcome the most influential factor in the equation -- that the resolve of this new president is steely. He said he would fight for tax cuts and he has. He hasn't buckled under to Daschle or Gephardt.

This resolve and commitment has confounded and dizzied the big-spending left, which has been steamrolling lily-livered Republicans for decades. It is the Democrats that are moving toward Bush, not Bush toward them. Not this time, and not this president.

When Clinton's recession began looming on the horizon, serious opposition to all of Bush's tax cuts essentially folded. It was just a matter of time until Bush would get most -- if not all -- of what he called for.

The mainstream media, of course, are attempting to characterize the $1.3 trillion Senate resolution as a major blow to the president's plans. What else would one expect from these nabobs. In the end, the Bush tax cut plan, relatively modest as it is, will, after all the hiss fits from the left have been thrown, be enacted and signed into law. Not bad for a beginning.