Yes, the new Bush budget is here and you need to get ready for the consequences.
I know that headline sounds extreme, but it's really just part of a Republican
plan that started under President Reagan. President Bush gave us the first
clue in a news conference
three years ago:
"we have the tax relief plan ... that now provides a new kind--a fiscal
straitjacket for Congress ... it's incredibly positive news" [President's
News Conference in Crawford, Texas 08/24/2001 (search for
'straitjacket' in 2001)]
The rabid right-wing conservatives call it "starving the
beast." It's documented all over the Web, but the concept is that you
increase spending and reduce income until the government is in dire straits
and the only solution is to cut spending on social programs.
Really. Yes, I know what it sounds like. But it's true - that's what
they want to do.
And Bush's current budget goes a long way towards doing it.
The increased costs in Bush's budget are largely hidden: it does
not include the cost of the war in Iraq, nor the fix for the alternative minimum
tax,
nor
the huge
increase in Social Security costs when the baby boomers start retiring - hundreds
of billions if not trillions of dollars over the next decade.
It does include a request to make the huge temporary tax cuts permanent (extending
the deficit as far as the eye can see), and cuts 65 programs, 38 of which
are in education.
Paul Krugman provides more details on tax manipulation by the current Congress
and administration, so I'll just leave you with
an excerpt from his piece:
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Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
don't worry dude, those tax cuts are gonna be made permanent, causing tons of investment...and the revenues will flow in.
we'll grow our way outa that deficit.
it could happen!
;-)
2 - Hal Pawluk
That's not the way it works these days, Mark.
The tax cuts go to a bunch of people who "invest" in stocks. The companies represented by those stocks invest in India and China.
Revenues will flow to corporate coffers, while most Americans will suffer.
It was different in the good old days, say thirty years ago, when the re-investments were made in America, but that doesn't happen the same way these days. Sure, some growth will continue here, but most will be exported because that's where most current and future profits are.
You need to take another look around and update your beliefs to match today's realities.
3 - Hal Pawluk
Just noticed that there's an implicit assumption in your post that cutting taxes increases federal revenues, Mark.
That's a myth, too.
Looking at the history of the U. S. economy, you find that there is no statistical correlation between the two.
Sometimes it works one way, sometimes the other.
4 - Mark Saleski
hmmm....perhaps i should have spread the sarcasm onto that comment a little thicker.
5 - Hal Pawluk
Aw, geez - I should have looked at the name more closely, but the problem is that there are those who believe exactly what you said and I got suckered :-)
6 - Al Barger
There's no pleasing you frickin' pinkos. Dubya and the Republican Congress are spending more money on all this social crap than any Democrat ever dreamt of. They're slapping up trillions of dollars of social pork, such as the new drug benefit they've just saddled us with, but you're still going to insist on the same old script about the extreme right wing starving widows and orphans.
Federal education spending is up something like two thirds during Bush's term, for another example. Doesn't matter. The goddam Congress is running us absolutely into the ground with social spending, but the Republicans don't care about the poor people.
God forbid a couple of percent tax cut to not steal quite as much money as they conceivably could from people who are actually paying the bills. These cuts are in fact apparently helping the economy to bounce back- and yes, increasing tax revenues. Which is good- cause how else do you think we're supposed to pay for all this stuff you are demanding?
They're not going to get ANY credit whatsoever for trying to help the poor, so why do they even bother?
By what is right and what would help the country overall, Dubya et al SHOULD actually cut the budget. Knock the shit out of all this social spending and various types of corporate welfare [such as agricultural subsidies].
If they actually CUT domestic spending by 25% [as opposed to increasing it massively year after year as they are actually doing], then what would you do?
Your rhetoric wouldn't change. You couldn't scream and holler much worse than you are now, and it would do the country a world of good.
7 - Mark Saleski
These cuts are in fact apparently helping the economy to bounce back- and yes, increasing tax revenues. Which is good- cause how else do you think we're supposed to pay for all this stuff you are demanding?
funny thing about this....when reagan said he'd cut tax, increase spending while simultaneously reducing the deficit, bush sr. called it voodoo economics.
what the hell is it now?
...and i didn't demand ANY of this social spending.
now wipe the spit off yer monitor.
8 - Hal Pawluk
Off your meds, Al?
9 - mike
What they want to do is re-instate the brutal capitalism that existed circa 1896--the so-called System of 1896--before the Federal Reserve and the income tax and the minimun wage and the eight hour work day.
With one important exception: the new "pure" capitalism includes massive government subsidies to favored industries and companies. Call it statist laissez-faire.
10 - Al Barger
Mike, I will not defend corporate subsidies. Notice that I specifically mentioned agricultural subsidies as a prime place to cut the budget.
Nor did I ever vote for Reagan. He kept spending that money, too. You're right on that.
However, "cutting" taxes in fact increased revenues. That in fact worked. There was never a year under Reagan where tax revenues went down. It's that spending kept going up.
I hate to defend the supply side stuff, though. Yes, generally these tax hikes have in fact ended up increasing net tax revenues by encouraging growth. Increasing tax revenues would not be my goal, however.
For both moral and practical reasons, I'd like to cut taxes enough so that the government in fact has significantly less money to spend. Start by eliminating the income tax.
11 - Mark Saleski
i can see how theoretically revenue would rise. historically the tax cuts have always been combined with some form of huge spending increase (usually defense)...and the tax cut was advertised as a way to eliminate the deficit. it never happened.
12 - Mark Saleski
oh, i forgot to say that i have a grin that nearly reaches around my entire head...because of the delicious irony of the increase in pres. bush's budget for the National Endowment For The Arts.
i hear laura bush had a lot to do with it, that pinko spendthrift!
;-)
13 - Hal Pawluk
Not to mention that Al's "trillions of dollars of social pork, such as the new drug benefit they've just saddled us with" is actually corporate pork, as seniors get less and drug companies make out like bandits.