In Friday's lead story on Barack Obama's budget proposal, "Obama, Breaking 'From [1]A Troubled Past,' Seeks A Budget To Reshape U.S. Priorities - Tax Rise for Wealthy - Push on Health and Energy [1]," reporter Jackie Calmes made one dubious statement - that George W. Bush was a free-marketideologue- and one liberal assumption: that income inequality is a bad thing.
Departing from the free market orthodoxy of his predecessor, George W. Bush, Mr. Obama would use the government's powers of spending and taxation to push the private market in new directions....Mr. Obama's tax proposals would reverse a trend toward greater income inequality in recent years by adding about $1 trillion over 10 years to the tax burden of the top 5 percent of taxpayers, roughly those making more than $250,000 a year.
Would this be the same "free market orthodoxy" behind Bush's $40 billion Medicare prescription drug program and his steel tariffs? Not to mention the gargantuan financial bailout he undertook in his last months in office.