Caroline Baum from Bloomberg has some very interesting advice for Democrats this fall:

Congressional Democrats like to blame former President George W. Bush for just about everything: the lousy economy, high unemployment, trillion-dollar deficits, two wars – and probably the bedbug epidemic in New York City.

With the 2010 midterm elections 10 weeks away, Democrats are debating whether “blame Bush” is still a winning strategy almost two years into the reign of President Barack Obama.

In general, it’s not. If the Democrats were smart, they would refocus their campaign and point a finger at Bush for the one thing they can rightly blame him for: the “biggest tax increase in history.”

(emphasis added)

Baum gives good reasoning to this and reminds the country of something the Republicans don’t want them to remember:

In order to enact a tax cut of that size with the Senate evenly divided, Congress used the reconciliation process, which requires a simple majority, not a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority.

If proposed legislation increases the federal deficit beyond the 10-year budget window, it is subject to a 60-vote point of order as provided by the Byrd Rule, named after the late West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd. The rule was designed to prevent lawmakers from adding extraneous amendments to reconciliation bills. Everyone knew, or should have known, that this was a temporary tax cut (wink, wink) designed to put pressure on future Congresses.

And the tax cuts will do just that – raise the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window. Even Republicans like Eric Cantor admit that one. That is “pay to play” rules that the Republicans tout, but want to ignore when it comes to their agenda.

But there is something else here that requires a wee-little bit of history, like all the way back to this past winter.

Remember when talk was of passing health care reform using reconciliation? The Republicans quickly took to the microphones and flat out told lies ranging from “we never used reconciliation before” to “reconciliation was never used for anything that cost this much”. Both were flat out wrong and can be proven in one piece of legislation, The Bush Tax Cuts, which not only raised the deficit far more than health care ever would (remember – health care reform actually reduces the deficit), but it was passed using reconciliation.

I really hope Democrats seize on this and push it as a major campaign line this fall. People are against The Bush Tax Cuts by a huge majority and making that the issue of 2010 will do nothing but help Democrats out this fall. And remember, the Democrats plan will let 98% of this country see bigger tax cuts than they got under Bush. Just the top 2% will pay more. If those people were able to make their fortunes from this great country, then wasn’t Joe Biden right in saying that it is “patriotic” to pay your taxes? To a sane person the answer is yes, but to the right they just want to take, take, take and not give a single thing back. That mentality will destroy this country in the long run.