Winged Pigs: Max Sawicky Praises the Corner

National Review pleasantly surprises Max Sawicky:

Something strange happened at The Corner. They let someone who is not a clown say something about economics. Turns out it's my buddy Kevin Hassett at the American Enterprise Institute. I reproduce it in full since it's my favorite comment on the SOTU, besides my own:

The economic portion of the speech could have been better. Bush dodged his biggest problem — his profligate spending — and offered nothing substantive to reverse the striking recent growth of government. The savings he mentioned were laughably small.

The idea factory is almost running on empty. He called for another commission, this time to study the long run entitlement problem. The experience of the most recent tax-reform commission was so terrible that the next commission members will have to be drawn from individuals who have been lost at sea for at least two years. (Emphasis added. -- mbs) What we really need is a commission to study commissions, or at least an advisory panel to study whether we need a commission to study commissions. That panel would, of course, be bipartisan, and I am disappointed he did not mention it tonight.

The American Competitiveness Initiative includes a recommendation to make the R&D tax credit permanent, something that has been advocated by every politician (except for those who understand how the abomination works) for a zillion years. It is not going to happen. Lawmakers enjoy squeezing lobbyists every other year or so when it is up for renewal. The tax panel savaged the R&D credit. They must be very happy tonight. The headline tax proposal is to make permanent something the tax panel tried to repeal. (Please reread the last paragraph now, but do be careful not to be caught in an infinite loop.)

He also wants to increase funding for hard sciences, a solid idea. We are running out of physicists, and we need more of them.

Kevin underscores a point I neglected -- the unmentionableness of Bush's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform. A member of this panel, Professor Edward Lazear of Stanford, just took the lead position at the Council of Economic Advisers. Now there's a good soldier.

I seem to be... much less... enthusiastic... about Kevin Hassett than Max is. Hassett has carried a lot of water for bad Bushie policies over the past six years--and knows better. And there is the egregious Dow 36000--where Kevin also knew better. But given that the bar at National Review's The Corner is at absolute zero, Hassett's contribution is a vast improvement.