‘Irresponsible’
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

New York’s Democrats, along with the Democratic presidential candidate, chide President Bush for expanding the deficit with “irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy,” as Senator Clinton puts it. So we were surprised to see Mrs. Clinton and Senator Schumer vote on Tuesday for $136 billion in corporate tax cuts for special interest groups.
The bill, called the American Jobs Creation Act, distributes targeted tax breaks to a range of groups: native Alaskan whalers, NASCAR race-track owners, bow-and-arrow makers, producers of fishing tackle boxes, and importers of Chinese ceiling fans, among others. The bill also includes $76.5 billion in tax cuts for “the manufacturing sector,” which the Congress takes to include film and music companies, architectural firms, and oil and gas producers.
The legislation was originally intended to repeal American export subsidies that the World Trade Organization found illegal in 2002 and thereby to avoid the punitive tariffs applied to American goods by the European Union. But this goal was too modest for the spendthrifts on Jenkins Hill. “What was supposed to be a quick and minor fix of the tax code blossomed into a huge giveaway of tax benefits,” said Senator Durbin, a Democrat of Illinois.
One of the Congress’s favorite giveaways is subsidies for ethanol, a corn based gasoline substitute. Subsidies for ethanol began during the energy crisis in the 1970s but persist today because of the political muscle of congressmen, such as South Dakota’s Tom Daschle, from corn growing states and of corporate welfare queens such as Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant that produces 60% of American ethanol. The General Accounting Office has concluded that “the ethanol program has little effect on the environment” and that “ethanol tax incentives have not significantly enhanced U.S. energy security.”
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer have had the courage to stand up to the ethanol lobby in the past. Last year, Mr. Schumer condemned an energy bill laden with ethanol mandates as a “grab bag of goodies for special interests,” winning him plaudits from deficit hawks nationwide. “We can barely believe it,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “but on ethanol we find ourselves on the same side as New York’s Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton.”
This week, however, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Schumer voted to extend ethanol subsidies through 2010. Plus, they created a new tax subsidy for biodiesel, another gasoline substitute, this one made not from corn but from soybeans.” This is one of the biggest legislative achievements we’ve ever had,” said the president of the American Soybean Association, Neal Bredehoeft.
Why would New York’s Senate delegation opt to line the pockets of red-state Midwestern farmers and agribusinessmen at the expense of drivers in cities such as New York? A spokesman for Mr. Schumer told The New York Sun that the senator supported the legislation because it included tax breaks for Kodak and IBM, big employers in New York State. So the senator from New York supports tax cuts for the wealthy, after all. Somehow, the deficit is only a concern to the Democrats when the president wants to reduce taxes not on a select number of large corporate interests but across the board, on all Americans.