White House Gives In On Bush-Era Tax Cuts

It isn't the washington posts's results. The table was made by the CBO director.

The important thing that I noticed was: "Elmendorf doesn't deny that tax cuts stimulate the economy. But they don't stimulate it that much, he says, and over the long run, the net economic growth from the tax cuts will be quite small. The net deficit impact won't be."

For all the fiscal responsibility I hear from the right, the idea that they are turning a blind eye to the effect tax cuts have on national debt is surprising.

The fact is the bush era tax cuts didn't pay for themselves and gave us massive debt, nothing suggests that they won't do it in the future.


The problem with the Bush tax cuts (and most right sided ideas) is they talk about tax cuts, but never do any spending cuts. Instead they spend quite a bit. Both Reagan and Bush ran up massive national debt. And now when media figures on both sides press the newly elected republican and tea party congressmen about what government spending they want to cut all we get is vague and ambiguous "Discretionary spending" which leaves out the bulk of the social programs like social security or medicare/medicaid that eat up government dollars. And they never talk about cutting defense spending which eats up a very large portion too.

Here is the pie graph of the 2010 budget Where should we start cutting?:


And for those that are worried about wealth redistribution ... Here is where the money is going:

Thank you Blindphleb.

Gave us massive debt?

That is simply ridiculous, you cannot gain debt by not collecting taxes. You gain debt by spending money you don't have. You cannot say that cutting taxes leads to debt. SPENDING leads to debt. Stop talking nonsense.

As for your graph why not cut each program by 30-40%

You drink the Glenn Beck Tea, therefore it's really easy to use your own words against you.

Please tell me how not collecting taxes adds to debt....

Budgets.

Right so if I overspend my paycheck cause I made "budgets" I can goto my employer and insist its all his fault cause he didn't pay me enough?

That's not how a federal budget works.

Since some people love hypothetical arguments or thought experiments ... lets do one.

Lets say you got a job, a good one, you're rolling in the dough. You have to work a lot -- 60hrs a week sometimes a little bit more. You buy a nice pad in downtown, a BMW M5 -- pretty sweet ride huh?, this is of course after you went to college for 4 years and then another 2 for your masters so you have some loans out.

Now lets say you decide you're working too much. You decide you want to go part time, so you can focus on your real passions in life.

Well now you don't have as much income and these loans that you have ... house, car, college ... well they need to be paid. You could sell things sure, cut back on food or the other little things, but your wife is very fickle and will probably leave you for someone else.

I'm sure it's that easy. Why aren't you in congress already?

So federal budgets cannot be changed?

Honestly man I'm glad there's more people who get it.

Maybe you can talk some sense into Zandra, idk though.

Who cares if its easy or not? I needs to be done. You just ranted on forever about how blah blah blah no one talks about cutting spending blah blah blah. So someone says lets cut spending and you scoff at the idea?

So whose fault is it that the Bush tax cuts were implemented without balancing the budget to account for the money they are no longer collecting? Tax cuts DID add to the debt when Bush made no spending cuts to compensate.

QFT

That would in part be Bush's fault, and I agree he should have veto-ed any budget bill that didn't cut spending.

What about of the trillions Obama has overspent? How do you not fault the next guy for doubling down on the SAME mistake?

What do you mean by this?

I'd say the people that claimed that tax cuts are always debt neutral. The idea was that tax cuts would spur the economy so greatly that the rise in GDP would compensate for the tax cuts themselves. Simply if you cut taxes, incomes grow so much that you recoup the cost of the tax cut by taxing the new higher incomes. However that didn't happen:



See that flat line from 2000-2007? That's a problem when you hope for massive increases in GDP to increase incomes so much that tax cuts pay for themselves.

How can you support extension of these tax cuts when, as far as I have read, there is still no plans to balance them with cuts to spending? The impact is minimal, and the long term effect on the deficit isn't beneficial. These should be allowed to expire, in my opinion.

Look I get the whole lets defund the whole New deal and great society programs so that we don't have them anymore strategy. I just think it's not going to work that well.

Remember 1995 and Newt Gingrich's pity party? He brought about the shutdown of the government because he wanted to defund Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental controls, and the EITC. That little debacle blew up in the republican's face and Clinton came out with his biggest approval ratings since being elected.

The problem is the voters like their programs; getting them to go along with doing away with social security and medicare is going to be a hell of a fight especially when you only control the house.

Hold on guys I want to know what Zandra means by:

I scoff at the idea for a few reasons. 1. mainstream republican/tea party people never talk about specific plans for doing it because they don't want old voters to fear cuts in social security or medicare. 2. a cut of 30-40% across the board would likely cripple the whole system. I don't have any proof right away on the 2nd part, but could you imagine cutting 30-40% of government workers? You think unemployment is bad now?

No you answer my questions first

lol you do that and you wont be re-elected. Honestly... if US would leave Afghanistan and Irak. Reduce in military spending and some other social areas. The deficit would start going down and then it is just a question of time. Tho I dont see that happening

Now it's a mistake to you? I've already shown I don't approve of extending these cuts from my first post in this thread so I don't know what you're on about. Yes, I think it's stupid and Obama shouldn't support it? Is that what you wanted to hear exactly? I'm not going to flame Obama :P

I can't answer your question until you tell me what it means.
LOL!

Amen! *coughs* ... I mean blasphemy! >_>

On another note to the intelligent people who are here atm;

What would guys think if the U.S. devalued the U.S. Dollar?

So when given the choices of either tax more or spend less, you'd choose tax more thinking that:

#1 all increased revenue would immediately go to paying down the debt, which i feel sorry for you if you really think giving them more money would encourage them to stop.

#2 we can just tax the rich enough to make up for the 1/3 of our budget we've borrowed this year and it wouldn't have any negative consequences.

Please tell me you're not that naive.