I know we all like to pat CLinton on the back for balancing the budget, but remember that Congress controls spending, and guess who was in Congress? Guess whose bills got vetoed because there wasn’t enough spending in them.
The Republicans are still the lesser of two evils on spending, although lately with Bush in the White House they are giving him everything he wants. I like them better when they have a Democrat to play off of.
JShore: The best estimates I’ve seen of the size of the Bush tax cut is about 1.6 trillion over 10 years. I’ve also seen current estimates that say Bush’s tax cuts so far may account for about .5% of the current increase in GDP. So there’s clearly some stimulative effect from them. So the true revenue cost to the government is probably on the order of 100 billion dollars a year.
That’s not chump change for revenue, but it’s about on the order of the cost of the prescription drug benefit everyone wants. Why aren’t you opposing that?
And it’s hyperbole to say that 100 billion a year is a prescription for deficits into the forseeable future. As a percentage of GDP, that’s about 1/10 the size of the deficit Reagan had, and the country grew out of those within six years.
If you want to make the case that you’d rather have a prescription drug coverage or grow the size of government an extra 2% per year instead of having the tax cut, that would be an honest argument to make. But this sky-is-falling hyperbole just weakens your position.
Sam: I have no idea where you are pulling the 100 billion a year figure from. As you noted, the 1.6 trillion over 10 years (which I don’t think includes interest on the additional debt nor the 2003 tax cuts) is only that little because of the back-loading. Once the cuts are fully phased in, we are talking more than just 1.6 trillion divided by 10 (or whatever you did to get your figure). And, the estimate about the increase in GDP sounds optimistic and, even if it is true, as people like Krugman have pointed out, it is not believable that this will be a long term effect. How tax cuts affect GDP when there is slack in the economy and how they do when the economy is not in recession are two different things.
The CBPP link I provided shows that in 2004, the tax cuts alone cost $300 billion dollars. And the note near the end explains how the long term effects of the tax cuts on economic growth were judged to have little effect on long-term economic growth, with the effects being either positive or negative.
If you are going to throw figures around, you ought to at least provide the links so we can see the sources and decide for ourselves how believable they are.
jshore. You’re right- I meant the Dems would have to “INCREASE taxes”.
Sam you arer assuming that Gore would have had a recession. I disagree. While a market correction was inevitable, I don’t think that the economy would have tank if Gore had been elected. And of course, as jshore also points out, the massive tax cuts also are a significant source of the deficit, as well as Bush’s militaristic polices. Although I agree that Gore might well have ventured into Afganistan, I doubt if the money & troop kia hemmorrage that Iraq is turning out to be would have happened. Yes, maybe the “balanced budget” might not have been sustained, but I strongly disagree about “massive” deficits.
I will agree that hvaing the GOP in Congress did keep the Dem admin spending in check to some extent. It seems to show that a GOP House, and a Dem Admin is a good thing for America.
How do you figure? The economy was already in trouble in late 2000.
But it is the President who sets the agenda and who actually submits a proposed budget for Congress to act upon. By my count, Republican Presidents have submitted 15 out of 23 of the budgets since 1981. Would you care to tell us how many of these proposed budgets have been balanced before Congress got their grubby spendthrift paws on them?