WWDD (What Would Dean Do)? Repeal the Bush Tax Cuts... Now!
From Slate's Timothy Noah comes this September 11th column about the financial impliations of the Bush tax cuts in the context of our current economic forecasts, and the proposed $87 billion in supplemental spending that Bush wants to fund the Iraqi occupation and comes to some not-so-startling conclusions: Repeal of ALL the Bush tax cuts is the only thing that will get this country even close to fiscal sanity again.
What do the numbers say?
"It says that if we cancel all Bush's tax cuts, we can maybe, using the rosiest possible assumptions, balance the budget within five years. If we don't cancel Bush's tax cuts, the budget deficit will remain in three digits through the end of this decade...
What are we waiting for?
Prominent Democrats in Congress are making empty threats either to withhold the $87 billion Bush requested or to match it with new domestic spending. Well, sure, they're politicians. What about the editorial pages of the liberal New York Times and the less-liberal but fiscally responsible Washington Post? Both this week scolded Bush about the tax cuts' irresponsibility in light of his latest budget request. But neither editorial page has spelled out precisely how much of those tax cuts we ought to repeal. For that you have to look, oddly enough, at the public statements of presidential candidates Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, both of whom forthrightly state the Bush tax cuts should be revoked in their entirety. Dean had the best line on this at the Sept. 8 Democratic presidential debate:
I'm not going to raise taxes. We're just going to go back to the same taxes that Bill Clinton had, because I think most people in America would be glad to pay the taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was the president of the United States, if they could only have the economy they had when Bill Clinton was president of the United States.
Amen."
What do the numbers say?
"It says that if we cancel all Bush's tax cuts, we can maybe, using the rosiest possible assumptions, balance the budget within five years. If we don't cancel Bush's tax cuts, the budget deficit will remain in three digits through the end of this decade...
What are we waiting for?
Prominent Democrats in Congress are making empty threats either to withhold the $87 billion Bush requested or to match it with new domestic spending. Well, sure, they're politicians. What about the editorial pages of the liberal New York Times and the less-liberal but fiscally responsible Washington Post? Both this week scolded Bush about the tax cuts' irresponsibility in light of his latest budget request. But neither editorial page has spelled out precisely how much of those tax cuts we ought to repeal. For that you have to look, oddly enough, at the public statements of presidential candidates Dick Gephardt and Howard Dean, both of whom forthrightly state the Bush tax cuts should be revoked in their entirety. Dean had the best line on this at the Sept. 8 Democratic presidential debate:
I'm not going to raise taxes. We're just going to go back to the same taxes that Bill Clinton had, because I think most people in America would be glad to pay the taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was the president of the United States, if they could only have the economy they had when Bill Clinton was president of the United States.
Amen."
Comments