Larry Summers - Oh, You Don't Say?

By J. Robert Smith

White House economic advisor Larry Summers is full of love for the tax rate deal that his boss, Barack Obama, cut with congressional Republicans.

To read quotes from Summers in an article in today's Washington Post, one wonders why Savior-in-Chief Obama didn't push sooner to extend the Bush era tax rates. That's right -- silly me. Mr. Obama was preoccupied making America safe for socialism. Tax rates needed to go up then to feed the beast-of-a-government that Dr. Franken-obama was creating in his laboratory.

But not anymore. No, siree. For those who haven't seen Summers' key quote, here goes:

[T]he first priority for addressing the budget deficit has to be getting the economy growing again at a rapid rate." The tax deal, he said, "offers the best prospect that was available for achieving the kind of escape velocity that we've been seeking for the past two years.

Curious, isn't it? Correct me if I'm wrong, Larry, but you say that a growing economy generates tax revenues for Washington to help reduce the deficit. Fast growth is very good, you say. Then you suggest that the best prospect for quicker revenue raising isn't to hike tax rates. Hmmm. That's got a familiar ring to it, say, the thinking of Ronald Reagan, Arthur Laffer, and the dreaded George W. Bush?

One can see why liberals have to double-down on their mindfulness exercises to keep from hyperventilating into faints over Mr. Obama's retreat from left orthodoxy, even if that retreat is merely tactical, as any good observer of the Anti-Reagan Barack Obama can attest.

But the left should take heart. Even that cutthroat and mass murderer, the saintly Vladimir Lenin, had to back off his socialist schemes to revive the moribund Russian economy. Lenin's foray into a freer economy was called the New Economic Policy (Novaya ekonomicheskaya politika -- NEP). Like Lenin, one suspects that Comrade Obama is just punting to buy time while he plots his next push toward a fuller measure of statism.

The betting is that the Great Socialization of America will resume when the tax rate extension deal lapses in twenty-four months -- if the left's guy, Barack, has his way. Lefties can take the money they save from the tax rate extension and bank on it.