It chose something different entirely: big tax cuts, yes, but tax cuts that were badly designed from a genuine supply-side perspective aimed at boosting growth, as well as Democratic domestic spending priorities, but very badly implemented. Moreover, the Bush administration combined its policies with an extraordinary reluctance to veto anything coming out of Congress, and, after the year or two that it took for this to become obvious, an inability to restrain Congress at all.
但接下来怪事却发生了：布什政府没有选择菜单上三款套餐中的任何一款，而是作出了截然不同的决定：没错，他们大规模削减了税赋，但其措施从真正有利于发展的供求角度看根本达不到预期的效果。他们也在一定程度上继承了民主党国内开支的重点，但执行起来却像是一团乱麻。不仅如此，布什政府在政策不力的同时还非常不愿意否决议会的任何提案，因此，一两年过后问题变得无法回避：那就是布什政府根本无法对国会起到任何抑制作用。