The rich should pay up

If you've been living in one of our many fine local caves recently, you might not know that a pair of hurricanes ripped up much of the U.S. Gulf Coast. Hurricane Rita, and particularly Hurricane Katrina, destroyed huge swaths of property and will cost billions of dollars to clean up. Somebody has to pay to fix up the mess down South. The question is, though, who should foot the bill?\nPresident Bush, for good or ill, is the man who sets the tone for the discussion. Even in the face of his excessively expensive adventure into Iraq and now the cost of rebuilding pretty much half of the Gulf Coast, Bush is saying he will not even consider tax increases. Instead of making the rich pay their fair share, he's suggesting to cut some $200 billion dollars from existing budgetary allotments to eventually pay for the reconstruction.\nWhat's he going to cut? The military budget? Fat chance of that -- he'll never touch the military's budget in a time of war. Welfare? It barely exists as it stands now, and cutting it would only further show the Republican callousness and disregard for the suffering of the poor. I might remind you that it was primarily the poor that were left to drown in New Orleans, it has been the poor that have received the worst end of the Bush tax cuts, and it is the ranks of the poor that have swelled every year since Bush has taken office. \nU.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has not expressed a preference yet on how we should tackle the tab we've run up for Katrina, but he is in agreement with many Americans when he said everything should be on the table. A recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll showed 42 percent of respondents thought taking from the Iraq war chest to pay for Katrina was the best way to go about it, and 29 percent supported raising taxes as the first choice.\nCutting the budgets of the soldiers in Iraq is not a feasible option, as they are already strapped for cash as it is. Pulling them out of Iraq is feasible, but I suspect that if we did that, we will have hell to pay for doing so down the road. That brings us to the option of Bush's tax cuts.\nEliminating most of the Bush tax cuts is the best course of action right now. Many of the tax cuts approved in 2001 were passed with "sunset clauses," which means they expire after a handful of years. This was originally done to help keep down the projected cost of the Bush tax cuts, and many expected they would eventually be made permanent. However, in this crisis we now find ourselves in, I think it unconscionable to consider extending them indefinitely. The United States is spending money like a freshman with a new credit card, and like many who made unwise credit decisions, we're going to regret it if we don't stop.