Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast. I'm Anastasia Glova and today is Tuesday January 16th.

Today's podcast is with Cato's Director of Tax Policy Studies, Chris Edwards.

Chris discusses his op-ed and tax notes entitled Will Democrats Raise Taxes.

Chris, what kind of a tax burden are we looking at with the new Congress?

At first, after the election I was pretty sure that Democrats wouldn't raise taxes.

They've already got their eyes set on 2008 in the presidential election.

I thought that Democrats wouldn't want to risk raising taxes of any type the next couple years because

they're so intent on winning the White House.

But then I started thinking not about Congress, but about the White House, and I realized that President Bush is the weak link here that

President Bush may be so eager to sign any kind of bipartisan deal that he'll agree

to substantial tax increases. I don't believe Bush is eager to increase taxes, but he has to compromise with Democrats

if Republicans expect any of their own agenda to be passed in a Democratic Congress.

Well, I'd rather nothing get done the next couple of years, frankly, if we have to agree to tax increases.

Nothing really has to get done in the economic world from Washington the next couple years.

The private economy works quite fine without meddling from Washington.

I would like to see the Bush tax cuts extended for example, but that doesn't have to happen until

after 2010.

Would the new wage increase be a significant threat?

Well, I think it shows a lot about President Bush.

President Bush has opposed a minimum wage increase in recent years, but now he's flip-flopping.

He's saying he's so desperate to get some sort of bipartisan legislative achievement, he's willing

to do bad economic policy with the Democrats to move his agenda ahead.

...