President Obama recently proposed letting companies (big and small) expense 100 percent of the cost of their equipment purchases made late this year and in 2011. It’s a good idea. It would be an even better idea if the expensing were permanent. Given the slow growth of capital equipment investment by U.S. companies, particularly manufacturers, in the last decade, the non-competitiveness of the U.S. corporate tax code, and the dramatic decline in U.S. manufacturing output and jobs (and corresponding chronic and enormous trade deficits), you’d think that both sides of the aisle would jump on this...