New Package, Same Product.

Paul Krugman says John McCain's proposed tax policy — reinstating the "temporary" Bush tax cuts set to expire in 2010 — will reduce federal revenue by more than $5 trillion over 10 years. (And that doesn't include the trillions we'll still owe for the Iraq adventure in democracy.)

But here’s the thing: the reason the Bush tax cuts are set to expire is that the Bush administration engaged in a game of deception. It put an expiration date on the tax cuts, which it never intended to honor, as a way to hide those tax cuts’ true cost.

The McCain campaign wants us to accept the success of that deception as a fact of life. Mr. Holtz-Eakin is saying, in effect, “We’re not engaged in any new irresponsibility — we’re just perpetuating the Bush administration’s irresponsibility. That doesn’t count.”

Of course, Pres. Bush would never have to honor an expiration date of 2010 when his own remove-by date was January 2009. Maybe he was trying a Hail Mary pass, hoping things would turn out okay if his tax-cuts-grow-the-economy dogma somehow turned out to be true. Either way, it meant he wouldn't have to face the political consequences of finding the revenue or radically cutting government.

His successor will, and to get the job, now McCain is trying to get Americans to buy the Bush product all over again.