Checkbook Journalism

An editorial about student test performance in today's San Francisco Chronicle contained this:

"If we can afford to give back trillions of dollars in tax relief to the highest income Americans, we should be able to spend the same amount on building safer neighborhoods, on creating better paying jobs, and in fashioning child-friendly communities for young people who, by an accident of birth, do not live in affluent households with access to high-quality schools."

So by spending the same amount of money as went for tax relief we can bulldoze and rebuild all poor neighborhoods, pay low paid workers more money and convince gangs to disband? That is thinking big. And all along I thought their real complaint about tax cuts had to do with a growing deficit.