What would a Democratic majority do in 2007?

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Raise taxes on upper-income people?
Rosner and other Clinton administration veterans at the think tank the Progressive Policy Institute have just published a new book "With All Our Might" which offers congressional Democrats new strategies for defeating Islamic terrorists.

Rosner and the Progressive Policy Institute president Will Marshall also call for raising taxes on “the wealthiest among us,” using the revenue to enlarge and modernize the armed forces.

Pelosi and Democratic leaders complain that the Republicans have created deficits, including one this year that the Congressional Budget Office expects to be nearly $340 billion, or about 2.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

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Pelosi has denounced the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts which most, but not all, Democrats voted against. The implication is that the way to increase revenues and cut future deficits is to raise taxes on upper-income people.

“If Democrats take control of both the House and Senate in the 2006 midterm elections it is virtually certain they would raise individual income tax rates on what they consider upper income, probably everyone making more than a congressman,” predicted Ken Kies, the former chief of staff of the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation who is now head of the Federal Policy Group at Clark Consulting.

“It is likely Bush would veto such legislation thus setting up what is likely to be a major issue in the 2008 presidential race,” Kies said.

But on "Meet the Press" Sunday, Russert asked Pelosi four times whether she’d try to roll back the tax cuts Congress passed since Bush became president; each time she avoided answering the question directly.

Can Bush learn from Clinton?
If the Democrats triumph in November, Kies’s reference to the veto may supply the blueprint to the rest of the Bush presidency.

Bush hasn’t yet vetoed a bill in his five-and-a-half years in office. But if Congress changes hands, he will have a chance to emulate his predecessor Bill Clinton, who had not vetoed any bills from the time he took office in 1993 until August 1995, after the GOP took control of the House and Senate in the 1994 elections.

Clinton ended up killing 37 Republican-passed bills with his veto pen, including two tax cuts, a ban on partial-birth abortion, and the first version of welfare reform.

Clinton’s vetoes helped him win the re-election in 1996 by demonstrating how unyielding he was. “I will not let you destroy Medicare,” Clinton said as he was about to veto the Republican attempt to reduce that program’s growth rate.

Although he’s not running for re-election, Bush might use the veto to revive his presidency as Clinton revived his.

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