Posted on 07/24/2011 1:59:55 PM PDT by shoff
With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
The first and fatal mistake was permitting global banksters and socialist politicans and judges to step outside of the constitution in the Federal Government’s scope of work and power and the creation of the Fed.
All lawlessness, invasion, theiving, taxing, spending, regulation and violation of individual rights (oppression) has come from that fatal error.
In short, the article is wrong. Here is a two page summary of the past ten years,
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/121xx/doc12187/ChangesBaselineProjections.pdf
Changes in interest payments alone cost almost as much as the Bush tax cuts.
There is a legitimate criticism of the Bush Tax Cuts. The problem with them is that they did not create the amount of economic activity that Bush said they would. For instance in 2003 EGTRRA and JGTRRA (BTC’s) cost about $236B. Changes in economic projections cost us $308B.
I’m working (low level and only when I feel like it) on a vanity post to lay all this stuff out with links and percentages and the like.
The traditional bus company in danger of bankruptcy illustration would say something about cutting the price of riding the bus or raising the price of riding the bus. Which will bring in more money?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the bus company cut the price and that it brought in a lot more revenue, more than enough to avoid bankruptcy.
The bus company goes insane, though, and decides to spend far beyond the extra money they earned after they lowered the bus fare. The bus company goes bankrupt.
What was responsible for their bankruptcy. Cutting fares? Over-spending?
Bush tax cuts raised government revenues to a record 2.57 trillion dollars annually.
That’s all the tax cuts needed to prove. They more than did that. Economic growth is all that matters as a prospect for solving debt.
Okay.
But take a look at what Bush projected revenues to be and what they actually were. You’ll see that Bush’s revenue projections fell far short.
The article is a fairy tale. First, the Clinton surpluses were fiction. Phony government accounting ignored huge future liabilities that should have been accounted in current deficits. Second, the economy improved sharply after the Bush tax cuts and tax revenue increased until the recession of 2008. Democrats insist that the economy would have behaved the same with higher tax rates. Third, Democrats insisted on larger spending in every budget that Bush proposed except for military spending. For the Medicare prescription drug plan, Democrats wanted a much more generous plan that they implemented as part of Obamacare. Fourth, the author completely ignores the spending orgy from 2009 to 2010. Contrary to Democrat propaganda, much of the new spending is structural, not temporary. Democrats have made large expansions to student aid (loans and grants), food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing assistance, and of course Obamacare (adding $2 to $6 trillion new spending over 10 years). Obamacare is unprecedented as it obligates states to match much new federal spending. I am sure that I have omitted other expansions of entitlement spending. Fifth, the author should indicate the large amount of welfare spending (refundable tax credits) in the Bush tax cuts. Democrats expanded tax welfare. The IRS has become a welfare agency.
The article reads like a DNC press release. The spending situation is unbelievably bad. The Bush tax cuts restored tax rates closer to the rates established in the 1986 tax reform, the last bipartisan tax bill. The Bush tax rates are still 7 percent higher than the 1986 rates.
Sorry, one more point.
To grow faster than today’s debt is growing, the economy would have to grow by more than $1.5T a year. Given that our GDP is about $14.5T, that’s just north of 10% a year. Even the Chinese can’t get that much growth. The US hasn’t had that high a growth rate since 1943.
The amount we spend on public housing is a pittance compared to Socialist Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
There are no costs to tax cuts. Government spending programs do have costs.
That’s true.
The deficit got as large as it is becaue of minimum wage.
They should tell these ass-hats: you show up at 0600 to pick the fields of stones.
You get no days off, you get no health insurance, you get no double time, you get no holiday time. You miss Sat or Sunday, and you get docked a whole week.
You don’t show upo for assigned work: we come looking for you and shoot you (or your family if YOU are not there).
We don’t need no stinkin’ unions; there are LOT of people here that need to be working (and they need to be undercutting the illegals).
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