Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through Congress on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy

From The New York Times:

Just a few years ago, the tax deal pushed through Congress on Tuesday would have been a Republican fiscal fantasy, a sweeping bill that locks in virtually all of the Bush-era tax cuts, exempts almost all estates from taxation, and enshrines the former president’s credo that dividends and capital gains should be taxed equally and gently.

Even one of the chief architects of the Bush tax cuts, R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia University economist, was not crowing about their potential enshrinement. He said some Bush-era policies were no longer relevant to the task of tailoring a tax code to a properly sized government.

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts “are not the best anchoring point” for that debate, he said. “We need a tax system that can promote economic growth and raise the revenue the American people want to devote to government.”