Bush Comforts the Comfortable

When George W. Bush, while campaigning for President in the fall of 2000, told the attendees at the Al Smith Dinner that his base voters were "the haves and the have-mores," everyone laughed at the joke. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush keeps on proving that he wasn't joking while continually looking to reward that segment of his base.

The latest efforts come in a two-pronged strategy: his administration's plan to reduce the number of estate tax lawyers employed by the Internal Revenue Service from 345 to 157 by the end of September, and the bid by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives to sharply cut inheritance taxes by tying the measure to a boost in the minimum wage.

The massive cut in estate tax lawyers will increase the workload on those who remain, which will add to the backlog of audits for that unit of the IRS. This, of course, will make it more likely that tax fraud in this area will either not be found out or detected years later than it could have been. Given that IRS and Treasury Department officials in recent years have complained that cheating by wealthy Americans is a growing problem - back in 2000 the IRS stated that 85 percent of the gift and estate tax transfers it audited cheated the government of its rightful share of taxes - the staff reduction is particularly baffling. Unless, of course, you're looking to make it easier for the wealthy to steal in this manner. In police stationhouses and courtrooms, this is called aiding and abetting.

If the White House's move seems cynical, it pales before what Mr. Bush's Congressional allies are doing in tying the first minimum wage hike in a decade - from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour - to a sharp reduction in estate taxes. The bill passed July 29, before the House began its summer recess, would exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015.

A law passed at Mr. Bush's request has been phasing out the estate tax so that it ends by 2010, but the following year jumps back to 55 percent on estates worth more than $1 million. The House of Representatives bill would reduce the bite for estates worth up to $25 million to 20 percent, and those worth more than that would pay tax rates of 30 percent.

Senate Democrats have vowed to derail the measure next week. There is some sentiment that the bill will nonetheless give Republicans facing tough re-election battles in November political cover against charges that they oppose hiking the minimum wage. Knowing Karl Rove, the political architect of Mr. Bush's reign of error, it would be no surprise to see national Republicans pursuing a strategy accusing Democrats of seeking to deny a living wage to the poorest-paid Americans.

Anyone who falls for such blather is foolish. The Bush Administration and its allies are offering a phony choice here. The minimum wage increase is long overdue and desperately needed. There is no urgency to giving yet another tax break to wealthy Americans, who have been the prime beneficiaries of so much of this administration's largesse over the past 5-1/2 years.

Abraham Lincoln famously spoke of a government "of the people, by the people, for the people." Mr. Bush, claiming to be the leader of the party of Lincoln, has engaged in government by the rich and for the rich.