Why can’t Washington politicians level with the American people, particularly when they are about to raise our taxes? That question is posed regularly on this page and it is addressed as directly and as often to Republicans as to Democrats. When the Democrats won a resounding victory last November in great part because they promised to clean up the corruption in the nation’s capital, we hoped there would be fewer occasions to justify repeating the question. If hope is the father of optimism, then the Democrats in charge of Congress are about to inspire a lot of pessimism.

Why can’t they just tell us they are setting the stage for the biggest tax increase ever? Nowhere do they describe it as a tax increase, but the Democrats’ budget resolution assumes approximately $900 billion in additional revenue. There is only one way to get that much added revenue and that is to repeal all or most of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 by allowing them to expire as scheduled in 2010. They will wait till after the 2008 presidential election to do it, but, assuming they keep control of Congress, expect Democrats to preserve some of the Bush cuts to lower and some middle-income tax payers. The result will be a tax hike of around $700 billion for most people in middle- and upper-income brackets. It should be noted that former President Bill Clinton acknowledged — after-the-fact — that his 1993 increase of $241 billion was “probably too much.” The coming increase now being prepared by congressional Democrats will be almost four times as big as Clinton’s, the previous record-holder.

Equally disturbing is the way Senate Democrats are stacking the deck against future efforts to extend the Bush cuts. Having previously perfected the use of the 60-vote super-majority in their battles against President Bush’s judicial nominees, Senate Democrats are now preparing Pay/Go rules that will effectively require a super-majority to pass a tax cut. Had the new Pay/Go rules been in effect, few or none of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 or 2003 would have been approved. Higher taxes mean less prosperity, fewer new jobs being created and much slower growth. The least the Democrats can do is be up front about the damage they are about to do to the economy and admit it will mean a tax increase for most taxpayers.