CUTS….The Carpetbagger is right: if you spend less than you’ve promised on a program, you’ve cut the program. President Bush should shelve the nonsense about how a cut isn’t really a cut and instead start demonstrating ? for real! ? some of the “courageous” honesty that Michael Kinsley bizarrely thought he divined at last week’s press conference. (Really, Michael, if that was honesty on display last Thursday, the word has truly been debased into uselessness.)
And a note to my conservative friends: this works both ways. If John Kerry had been elected and had proposed spending less than planned on defense, that would have been a cut too. In all these cases we can argue about whether the cuts are good ideas or not, but they are cuts.
