Subject:
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Shrub's Economy (The Gladhand of Death)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 6 Jun 2003 00:06:09 GMT
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Viewed:
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160 times
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Bush’s reckless economics
By Robert Kuttner, 6/4/2003
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/155/oped/Bush_s_reckless_economicsP.shtml
IT’S EASY to understand why the administration is plowing ahead with one immense
tax cut after another. The Bush people oppose social outlays, and the best
strategy for cutting public services is to starve government.
It’s a neat game: Cut taxes on the Republican watch (Reagan, Bush I), force
intervening Democratic presidents to opt for fiscal prudence over social
investment - someone has to - and then, when the budget is back in balance at a
lower level of social outlay, do it again (Bush II).
This maneuver forces Democrats to take responsibility for periodically raising
taxes to undo the economic damage. Putting budget balance ahead of social outlay
also undercuts the traditional Democratic winning formula of delivering services
that ordinary Americans actually value.
No serious independent economist believes that the Bush tax cut is sensible
growth policy. If the administration were serious about restoring growth and
preferred tax cutting as the mechanism, far more of the tax cut would take place
this year, and more of it would go to working families, who would go out and
spend the money. But such is the cynicism of the administration that the one
portion of the tax cut that actually does benefit working families - the child
tax credit - was deleted for most lower-income families from the final bill.
The Enronization Of Public Policy
Arianna Huffington
Filed June 4, 2003
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/060403.html
Has there ever been a clearer, more irrefutable example of our political
leaders’ lack of a moral compass than the clandestine, eleventh-hour elimination
of a promised child tax credit for almost 12 million of America’s poorest
children?
It’s a move that is so cold-hearted and so profoundly dishonorable that it could
only have been made by people who have lost all moral direction.
A magnetic compass should always point north; a moral compass should always
point out what is moral -- and immoral. Heaping billions on the rich while
ensuring that one out of six American kids doesn’t get a penny is dead wrong.
But that’s exactly what Congressional Republicans did -- and what President Bush
signed off on.
This is not a right/left issue. It’s a right/wrong issue. But the GOP’s
self-appointed morality czars have been deafeningly silent on this bit of
economic indecency. I guess Bill Bennett was too busy shaking the hands of every
one-armed bandit in Vegas to notice.
Adding to the obscenity is the fact that while the Congressional hatchet men
were hacking up the $3.5 billion child tax credit in the name of keeping the
total tax cut under $350 billion, they let stand billions in corporate tax
dodges and accounting cons, including the use of offshore tax havens.
SNIP!
Like many disgraced companies, the White House has proven adept at playing fast
and loose with the numbers in order to mislead its “shareholders” -- the
American people. Take the administration’s shifty use of “averages” to make it
seem like the new tax cut benefits everyone -- claiming that “91 million
taxpayers will receive, on average, a tax cut of $1,226,” when, in fact, the
majority of households will receive a tax cut of $100 or less. Or the way it
used sure-to-be-repealed “sunset clauses” to make it seem as if the president
was reasonably settling for a $350 billion tax cut, when the actual price tag on
the new bill will be close to $1 trillion.
SNIP!
CEOs lying to investors to pad their own pockets is bad enough. Political
leaders lying to the American people to pad the pockets of their big buck
contributors is immoral - - and intolerable.
-- Hop-Frog
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Shrub's Economy (The Gladhand of Death)
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| (...) This guy is on the right track, he just misses the correct conclusion. Yes the best way to shrink this hulking giant of a government is to starve it via tax cuts. Problem is congressmen on both sides of the aisle are scared to make the large (...) (21 years ago, 6-Jun-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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