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The notion that it might be neither of these things — that it would remain in effect, like any law, only until it were repealed, and that, like any law, its ability to bind future parliaments consisted in the effort required to repeal it, with all of the political risks that might go with it — did not seem to occur to anyone. It was all just too frightening and disturbing.

Then came the budget, and the “box” it had supposedly put the opposition parties in, by virtue of the string of expensive tax credits, deductions and benefits — income-splitting for couples with children, higher annual limits on contributions to Tax Free Savings Accounts, the expanded universal child benefit — it contained. Imagine spending the surplus on his own programs, the critics said, rather than leaving it to the opposition to spend on theirs. Why, it’s diabolical.

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Some said this with disdain for the prime minister’s presumption, others with admiration for his cunning, but all agreed he had left the opposition parties with no option — other than, say, to repeal the programs in question, or cut spending in other areas, or raise taxes, or run a deficit: unpleasant choices, to be sure, but the kind that face most governments at most times, all of whom inherit the policies of their predecessors.

This was, of course, only the latest iteration on a favourite paranoid theme: the notion that Harper has a long-term strategy to “starve the beast,” through policies like the two percentage point cut in the GST, aimed at depriving governments — from here to eternity — of the revenues with which to fund needed spending programs.