Trickle Down Economics

Bush is pushing all taxes further down - to states and cities.

In a sense, Republicans are using the very same tactic against the states that Reagan employed to win the cold war against the Soviet empire: force your enemy to spend himself into poverty until, at some point, the infrastructure on which he stands gives way and topples.

That's fine, except taxpayers -- even those who vote for smaller government -- have come to demand a certain threshold of services. People are living longer, and they can't go without health care. Disabilities are being diagnosed in children, and those children can't just be left to fail in crowded classrooms. And so the nation's governors find that they are not only governors in the traditional sense, but advocates, too. Under an ever-darkening economic sky, they're forced to play the role of civics teachers, trying to make people in their communities (not to mention those in their own parties) understand that you can't get everything for nothing.

''I wasn't going to make further cuts in education,'' Kempthorne [Republican governor of Idaho] told me. ''I wasn't going to release prisoners. I saw that in other states, and it was a disaster. We had proposals that would have eliminated the delivery of meals to elderly who had chosen to remain in their homes. If they don't receive that food, then they have no choice but to go into a nursing home. Why would you take their dignity away from them?

''I did what was unpopular, but in my mind and heart it was the right thing to do. And I think the measures that I've taken that are being criticized by my brethren conservatives, well. . . . '' He sighed. ''They're not standing in my shoes.''