Our nation's fiscal planners -- and I use "planners" with utmost liberality -- want you to think they are sober-minded Dudley DoRights on mounted steed, peering far ahead and guarding against economic insecurity. More accurate, however, is the metaphor of a fantasizing Snoopy atop an airborne doghouse, sooty goggles fixed and scarf flapping, sneering at impending disasters of flak and enemy fire all about.

If you find the comparison an insult to lovable Snoopy, picture instead those daring Republicans in their fiscal machines as the nearsighted Mr. McGoo, destructive Wile E. Coyote, impetuous Daffy Duck and earth-scorching Tasmanian Devil all in one. The metaphorical characters are apt not merely because each instructs on the perils of blind single-mindedness -- where single-mindedness is often ok, sometimes even admirable, though obliviousness is always a killer. Rather, the cartoon personalities are apt because they are, alas … cartoonish. And when mingled with the genre of Greek tragedy, buffoonish parody fits presidential and congressional fiscal policy to a tee these days.

The 2 camps of incumbent brainpower recently appeared in the hilarious Keystone Cops Conspiracy, otherwise known outside the beltway as the Stupendously Stupid Tax Bill of Aught Three. When it's easy to picture real-life fiscal protagonists as the comically nearsighted, destructive, impetuous and earth-scorching McGoo, et al, then these are amusing times, but also a time to be afraid.

Although the tax bill's actual title carries with it the common political tragedy of major deception, it compensates with loads of zany Warner Bros. humor. Just as Voltaire once observed the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire, so the "Jobs and Growth Reconciliation Tax Act of 2003" signifies neither job creation, nor economic growth, nor, even, reconciliation.

On its best day it leaves America 2-million jobs shy of where she was on W's inauguration day -- that's a gain of 500,000 jobs -- and retards economic progress by making money more expensive and capital formation more difficult. The long-term result is reversal of jobs gained, and then once again we continue the slide.

Further, there was as much authentic House-Senate reconciliation as exists between Iraqi Shiites and the Ba'ath Party. In a desperately needed (by us) change of pace, the usually goose-stepping Republicans went after one another like Sylvester and Tweety Pie. Legislative fur and feathers flew. While the Grand Old Party-downers agreed on the highest principle of denying the industrial-urchin class another bowl of soup, Sir, they heaved up their general principles on paper only after calling one another the worst sort of prevaricating, ignorant boobs. (In division, there is yet hope for America.) To top things off, they somehow forgot to mention to backbenchers that oh, by the way, at the last minute we nixed checks to the $5.50-an-hour crowd. That disclosure was left to the Republican Party's official organ -- the New York Times.

Another disclosure of probable interest to American taxpayers came from the transatlantic front, no less. Last week the Financial Times reported that to ensure passage of the mammoth tax cut the White House hushed a Treasury-commissioned report showing "the US currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totalling at least $44,200bn in current US dollars." For those unaccustomed to Brit-speak, that's $44 trillion of debt. "Ah-ba-dee, ah-ba-dee, that's all folks."

According to the Times, the report also concluded "that closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase."

As your children watch the alternative, G-rated version of Wile E. Coyote next Saturday morning, don't spoil their fun by explaining what they face in the grueling decades ahead: colossally higher taxes to avert national default -- and likely no Social Security, Medicare, student loans, a clean and cleaned-up environment, decent health care, livable cities…. Well, best to just not bring it up. Good morning, children.

While speeding their fiscal Frankenstein to creation before anyone could study its precise monstrosities, Warner Bros. Republicans indulged in still other madcap antics such as a $70-billion, dividend tax cut "mistake." Democratic Senator Max Baucus earned, I hope, the prestigious Understatement of the Year Award when he soon commented that the bill was "not thought through." Analytical ability may get you into the United States Senate, but plan on drinking your bourbon and branch water alone when you get there. Honesty is not much admired.

And then there was California Republican Bill Thomas, who, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, cited an expert tax study during House debate which proved, mind you, that the bill "brings more revenue back to the federal government." In fact, the study determined the bill's "revenue feedback" could be as low as 2.6 percent of its cost. So forget minority status in the Senate. Analytical ability of that sort can make you a powerful House committee chairman -- in LooneyTuneLand, anyway. And that, it seems, is the land in which we find ourselves.

Already legendary is the sober Financial Times's remark that "the lunatics are now in charge of the [American political] asylum." And the lunacy has grown to statutorily weird, cartoonish proportions. Come to think of it, in his comical flight get-up on the deck of the U.S.S. Lincoln, George W. even looked a little like Warner Bros.'s Marvin the Martian.

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© Copyright 2003 P. M. Carpenter

Mr. Carpenter's column is published weekly by History News Network and buzzflash.com.