Rove, Hubbard Back Tax Increase

The chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers, Glenn Hubbard, has an op-ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal calling for a "better way forward." He writes, "the president and the Congress need to present a credible path toward lower deficits and more effective government. Such a plan should have three elements." The third element? "Confront and propose significant, broad-based tax increases...To raise the revenue for the president's welfare-state ambitions, the tax increases must necessarily be broad-based, as, for example, with a broad-based consumption tax." President Bush's former aide Karl Rove, on Twitter, calls this a "great piece." Maybe I am mis-reading Mr. Hubbard or Mr. Rove, or maybe I missed the "change-of-course" memo from President Bush, who came into office campaigning for tax cuts. But are we really at a point where we want the government taking more of what we earn? Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Rove sound like Nancy Pelosi.