TOM DELAY UP FRONT ABOUT IT:

Today's speech on the House floor shows Delay's reasoning behind the tax cuts. From his speech, which you can access here.

Others say they worry about the deficit. But their argument contradicts itself. The budget was balanced in the 1990s through spending restraint and economic growth.

Letting people keep more of their own money stimulates the economy and limits our ability to spend.

Those opposing significant tax relief would intentionally hamstring the economy and leave hundreds of billions in Washington to be spent like a stray $20 bill in Las Vegas

MORE: Just in case it's not clear, let me spell out what I think this speech by Delay indicates:

• The House Republicans are not concerned about deficits. In fact, for Delay, deficits are good because they constrain future spending. In other words, Delay and the House Republicans would rather spend money on the interest on the national debt than on federal programs.


• The House Republicans are trying to do what they couldn't do with Clinton in the White House (remember the budget battles with Clinton?). Now is their chance to ensure that significant cuts in federal programs that they can't enact frontally and honestly will be favored in future Congresses as well because of budgetary constraints.


• The House Republicans, at least, know that they can get away with this long-term strategy of retrenchment by wrapping themselves in the mantle of patriotism and following a President who is fresh from military victory and who can play on the fears of a public concerned about terrorism and safety. The Bush administration's military strategy seems to require huge investments in the military in order to be able to back up, credibly, threats against nations that might wish to harbor and support terrorists. You can bet that spending on the military is not what Delay is thinking of when he speaks of federal money being spent "like a stray $20 bill in Las Vegas," even if critics of Bush's foreign policy might describe the current administrations approach to military force abroad as a risky, high-stakes game.

I hope that Delay keeps talking. The idea of consciously running up the deficit as a means of binding future Congresses is a radical expression of the resurgent Republican Party's desire to leave their mark on the federal government by any means necessary. If they can't defend cuts in environmental, educational, health care, and other social welfare programs on the merits of those programs, they'll go after them with the hammer of patriotism and the anvil of astronomical budget deficits.

And let me just add one more line from Delay's speech:

We need real tax relief to create jobs, grow an economy that can afford all our priorities, balance the budget, and hold the line on spending.

Delay also has the audacity to defend the President's huge tax relief proposal as a means of balancing the budget. The mind staggers at this statement, especially since the long-term strategy clearly is to run up deficits in order to engage in retrenchment. But even if you're not willing to be as cynical as I am in assuming that Delay is defending, frontally, a neo-Reaganesque program of deficits to kill federal government programs, you're still left with the massive contradiction in Delay's speech: deficits balance the budget. Try telling that to your kids when you're teaching them about credit card debt, for example. Delay's audacity here is mind-numbing. That's probably partly the intention of his statements here. If you tell a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. Amazing.