Bush's Tax Cuts Are Dead

February 6, 2008
Bush's Tax Cuts Are Dead

John McCain's performance in the Super Tuesday primaries, coupled with the release of President Bush's fantastical budget on Monday, may have doomed the extension of the Bush tax cuts on income, capital gains and dividends, which are slated to expire after 2010.

The proposed budget for fiscal 2009, which starts in Oct. 2008, confirmed that the Bush fiscal performance will end, as it began, as a clown show. The administration expects that if its proposal is enacted into law, the next president will confront a $409 billion deficit next year. And that's the rosy scenario version, assuming that gross domestic product will grow 2.7% in 2008, compared with a consensus estimate of about 2.2%, and that discretionary non-defense spending will barely budge, to cite two examples. And it fails to include the full cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Tax Cuts Don't Boost Revenues

December 06, 2007
Tax Cuts Don't Boost Revenues

If there's one thing that Republican politicians agree on, it's that slashing taxes brings the government more money. "You cut taxes, and the tax revenues increase," President Bush said in a speech last year. Keeping taxes low, Vice President Dick Cheney explained in a recent interview, "does produce more revenue for the Federal Government." Presidential candidate John McCain declared in March that "tax cuts ... as we all know, increase revenues." His rival Rudy Giuliani couldn't agree more. "I know that reducing taxes produces more revenues," he intones in a new TV ad.

If there's one thing that economists agree on, it's that these claims are false. We're not talking just ivory-tower lefties. Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves--and were never intended to. Harvard professor Greg Mankiw, chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005, even devotes a section of his best-selling economics textbook to debunking the claim that tax cuts increase revenues.

Comptroller General: Learn from the fall of Rome

August 14, 2007
Comptroller General: Learn from the fall of Rome

The US government is on a 'burning platform' of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country's top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country's future in a report that lays out what he called "chilling long-term simulations".

These include "dramatic" tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Your Tax Cuts At Work

Your Tax Cuts At Work
August 4, 2007

Balancing budget now won't solve U.S. debt woes

April 30, 2007
Balancing budget now won't solve U.S. debt woes

Let's assume that all of Bush's projections were to come true and a surplus was realized in 2012. According to his playbook, the story either ends there or reverts to the old ploy of more tax cuts. But the story neglects one detail: The national debt. During the Bush years, the debt grew from $5.7 trillion to $8.8 trillion, a 54 percent increase. By the time Bush leaves office, it'll have grown past $10 trillion. In other words, Bush will have saddled the country with almost more debt than all previous presidents combined, including Ronald Reagan, the last champion of Republican fiscal discipline.

Bush built his economic promises on two lies: That tax cuts would "generate strong revenues to the Treasury" -- demonstrably false, considering the near doubling of the national debt. And that balancing the budget was the end game. Why, then, did his administration report last week once again that Medicare and Social Security are heading for bankruptcy by 2019 and 2041 respectively, even as the administration keeps badgering Congress to make permanent the tax cuts that amplified bankruptcy? Because the true end game is to use bankruptcy as a means of ending government programs socially beneficial to tens of millions while rigging the tax code to benefit the nation's wealth and dividend class -- its richest 1 percent and overwhelming profiteers of the Bush years.

History of the Public Debt

February 5, 2007
Clicking the link below will load a pdf file from the Treasury Department.
US Government Debt (1982-January 21, 2007 (PDF)