Did Bush Tax Cuts Contribute Significantly To The Deficit? Yes/No

Discussion in 'Opinion POLLS' started by TheTaoOfBill, Jul 31, 2011.

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Did Bush Tax Cuts Contribute Significantly To The Deficit?

  1. Yes

    62.4%
  2. No

    37.6%
  1. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Bush's biggest tax cut, by far, was in 2001, which had an immediate effect that year with the rebate.

    I agree you can cherry pick the few average years we had with the Bush tax cuts and ignore the majority of all the rest that were below average and make his numbers look better.

    Even doing that, Bush's very best year, with the tax cuts in full effect steaming the economy into growth, was worse that 6 of Clinton's years, after his tax increase.

    Bush's *best* years:

    Year - GDP %
    2003 2.5%
    2004 3.6% <- Best year
    2005 3.1%
    2006 2.7%
    2007 2.1%

    Clinton years (years better than Bush's best are bolded)

    Year - % GDP growth
    1993 2.9%
    1994 4.1%
    1995 2.5%
    1996 3.7%
    1997 4.5%
    1998 4.4%
    1999 4.8%
    2000 4.1%


    Data source: BEA.gov

    Even if we cherry pick and just look at Bush's best years and ignore the others, it's hardly an endorsement of the effectiveness of his tax cuts, IMO.
     
  2. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    When Obama took office, the economy was tanking at a -7% real rate, losing 700,000+ jobs a month, unemployment was skyrocketing, and the stock markets were crashing in the worst recession in 80 years.

    But now the economy has been growing steadily for a year and a half, the private sector has created jobs every month for more than a year, stock markets are up about 70%, and the unemployment rate has fallen from above 10% to just above 9%, and 5 million private sector jobs have been added since Jan 2010.

    Only a rank partisan invested in failure for political purposes could say that the policies failed and the economy hasn't turned around.
     
  3. JavaBlack

    JavaBlack New Member

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    Of course they did.
    Conservatives tend to focus on a bunch of one-shot costs and temporary increases in services for the poor (duh... fewer jobs, more food stamps and unemployment) and act like that's super-unsustainable.
    Then we have Social Security... which policy-wise can be fixed with a mix of benefit cuts, tax hikes, age-raising, means-testing, cap-raising. Politics-wise it's difficult and the exact combination tough... but it doesn't take radical reform-- just enough to get us over the Boomer hump.
    Then Medicare... where they are right, but extremely disingenuous. The problem is actually health care inflation. Private medical care will also go down the tubes, it just won't take the budget with it (directly, anyway). Now, now... which politicians have said anything serious about this? Center-left wonks... the demonized ACA attempts a little and was hoped to do more in its inception... Tim Pawlenty mentioned it (but falsely makes it exclusive to ACA as opposed to something that is complementary to it).
    And who were the people screaming "DEATH PANELS!!!" at any attempt to bring costs in line? Well, you know.

    Then there's the Bush tax cuts...
    A huge structural decrease in revenues. Well, granted, they were designed to go away after a while. But they didn't.
    And seeing how great the Democrats are at negotiating (not good enough to escape a paper bag), I don't think they will be any time soon.

    But that's okay, because Michelle Bachmann will collect a dollar from all them lucky working poor folks.
     
  4. Wildjoker5

    Wildjoker5 Well-Known Member

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    Agreed, why GWB ever left democrats incharge of fanny and freddy was his failure.

    "Growing steady"? Is that what you call unemployment going from 8.9% to 9.1% this year? That is growing for sure.

    Sure, if you cherry pick your stats, they did go from 10.1% to 9.1%, but if you look at the overall picture from the first full month Obama has been elected, it was 8.2% and he signed his stimulus day 1. Since then, we have been sustained at 9% unemployment and not moving. That is what is called stagnant.

    This stagnation is because the market as corrected its self from the housing bubble that democrats ushered in with their pets freddy and fanny. I am not saying the stimulus caused this mess, but it sure isn't helping, and to credit it as the reason for the unemployment stopping at 10%, you should also credit it for keeping us at 9%. Stimuluses are like holding a mudslide up with a volleyball net, the net softens the blow, but doesn't stop the slide, only prolongs the enevitable.

    And what is this claim about 70% growth in the stock market source? January 23, 2009 DOW was at 8,077.56. As of right now it is 11,160.11. That is a 38% in "growth". And how has Obama or his policies effected this growth, other that deflating our currency?

    Since I always call the 2003 the actual tax cut that meant something, the DOW was at 7,673.99. And grew to 14,164.53 right before the collapse of the housing market in 2007. If a president can effect the DOW at all, this means there was an 84.6% "growth". Since allowing ALL individuals to have more money to invest compared to selecting which companies to give a stimulus too would have a greater effect on stocks, the tax cuts were better for the economy than stimulus to select few for non-existant "shovel ready jobs".

    From 2007, the market has been correcting its self of the bubble created through government backed (progressive idea) home loans thought up by democrats and champion by liberals, the market has been on its own correcting path like a placid pond that had a boulder thrown in it.
    Only liberals try to speculate about how things may have been.

    There is no proof that the decline in revenue caused by the dot com bubble bust would have turned around without the 2003 tax cuts.

    There is no proof that things would have been worse without the stimulus.

    Yet liberals love to speculate about how things would have been if they had their way, either to account for their failures or their opponents (not enemies) success.
     
  5. JavaBlack

    JavaBlack New Member

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    If true (it's not), this is quite sad for conservatives.
    There's no way to actually evaluate a policy without comparing it to the alternatives.

    If I were to take you at face value (as opposed to studies suggesting otherwise) that there's no proof that things would be worse without the stimulus, we also have the problem that there is no proof that things wouldn't be worse.
    This doesn't just leave us with an "Is there a God?"-type question... because the answer to such a question is practically useless. Here we have something that cannot be evaluated and an implication that no policy can ever be evaluated...
    Therefore leaving us in the nihilistic situation of having no reason to even consider the value of any particular policy or separate causation from correlation (after all, we'll just assume only 100% success following a policy, whether caused by it or not-- because who knows?!-- shows that something worked).

    Furthermore not believing we can look backward and compare to a scenario that didn't happen, how can you say that the problem wasn't that the stimulus was too small? You can't. You have to give that equal weight to the idea that stimulus is an inherent failure unless you somehow find a way that we can speculate.
     
  6. Wildjoker5

    Wildjoker5 Well-Known Member

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    Yes, rebates, just like the 3 that have been passed the last 3 years, the economy hasn't changed. The actuall cuts in personal income taxes where the biggest in 2003.

    Ignore the majority of the rest? You mean ignore the rest? Since we are looking at actuall steady money in the hands of the consumers and not a one time payout, the majority of money in the hands of consumers was from 2003 on. In 2003 was the worst year for revenue under Bush and turned around even with 2 wars going on, the deficit spending decrease because of added revenue.

    If $1 of welfare and food stamps equals $1.60 in return and that is for 40million Americans, then $1 in tax cuts for the 150 million workers also equals $1.60 in return. You can't say one government handout eqautes to more money while trying to discredit another. (although tax cuts aren't handouts)

    Yes, Clinton was president during a great time. He had the head stong computer companies building up and exploding, creating many jobs and revolutionizing the world. He raised taxes at the oportune time, during a boom era. And on the other side of that boom, Bush had to deal with the recession that followed that boom. But Bush did turn around the falling revenue because of the 2003 tax cuts...and they were scheduled too long to stay in effect.

    Really, hindsight, the tax cuts shoud have been done with slashing the entire 3% off the rates, left that way for 3 years, then gradually by 1% increase each of the next 3 years back to Clinton rates. This still wouldn't have prevented the housing collapse nor would have made up for Obama raising the deficit spending by $1 trillion.
     
  7. Wildjoker5

    Wildjoker5 Well-Known Member

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    Agreed. Going off the stated goals of each is the basis to judge them.

    Tax cuts goal stated by Bush, "a tax cut would stimulate the economy and create jobs." No spefic amount of jobs nor amount of economy stimulation predicted, just that it would. When the 2003 tax cuts happened in May 2003, the unemployment went from 6.1% up to 6.3% in Jun 2003 (as speculated now, more people getting into the employment hunt game) and dropping to 4.4% in Oct 2006 and staying under 5% till Dec 2007 (democrats incharge of the house and minimum wage increased). It hovered around 5% till May 2008 (gas prices soaring) and taking off in July 2008 when minimum wage is raised agian.

    Of coarse raising the minimum wage is one easy way for the government to forcibly take more from the rich, but it has detrimental effects to the company and the response to the decline in revenue is to lay people off. Companies have to be in it to make a profit.

    Now for the stimulus,
    Since the unemployment did go above 9%, even 10%, in 2 years, that is a resounding fail in stated goals.

    So, to recap, Bush's tax cuts were to stimulate the economy and lower unemployment. Both things happened and both happend rather quickly. To speculate these things would have happened without the tax cuts is the liberals trying to discredit what Bush said.

    Obama's stimulus was to keep 3 million jobs and to keep the unemployment under 9% in the coming 2 years. Since we are 2.5 years after the stimulus and the unemployment is still above 9% and those jobs weren't "saved", that is a fail. To speculate that things would be worse if there had been no stimulus is the liberals trying to make excuses for the failure of what Obama said.

    What was stated and what happened is the measuring stick as I showed you.
     
  8. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Source for this assertion? Do you mean the effect of the tax cuts were greatest? The 2003 cuts may have had some personal income tax aspects, it dropped the investment tax rates, but did not change the income tax rates. The 2001 tax cut was the one that cut personal income tax rates.

    The cumulative effect of the tax cuts was greater in 2003 than 2001 or 2002, I agree, which explains why revenues tanked so much.

    Right, when they stopped cutting taxes, revenues started growing. And so why does that mean you exclude the other years of the Bush tax cuts?

    $1 for welfare is $1 spent that would not otherwise be spent. Whether tax cuts are spent depends on who gets the tax cuts. The Bush tax cuts mostly benefited the wealthiest, who spend tend to spend less of their income. If a business or person has $100 million they are not spending or investing because they are concerned about the economy, giving them millions more in tax cuts isn't going to help the economy much.

    Clinton was president during a great time, which was great even with his big tax increase, contrary to what conservatives claimed would happen. They claimed his tax increase would destroy the economy and kill jobs. Just as they are today. The couldn't have been more wrong in 1993. Why should anyone think they are right today?

    The 2003 tax cut caused falling revenue. Revenues grew when they stopped slashing tax, but didn't come close to making up for the loss.

    I'm not sure what you mean by 3%, but I agree in a general sense. I didn't fault Bush for a tax rebate in 2001 to stimulate the economy. But once the economy started growing again, and they decided they wanted to spend a bunch of money on military buildup and wars, maintaining those tax cuts just added trillions to the debt at a time when the economy was doing OK.
     
  9. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Do your sources actually tell you this, our do you just make it up as you go along?

    Bush never left Democrats in charge of F/F. F/F oversight was the responsibility of the OFHEO, a White House administrative agency under HUD.

    No, this is what I call growing steadily:

    Quarter - %chng GDP annualized
    2008q4 -9.2%
    2009q1 -6.8% <- Obama takes office.
    2009q2 -0.7%
    2009q3 1.7%
    2009q4 3.7%
    2010q1 3.9%
    2010q2 3.7%
    2010q3 2.5%
    2010q4 2.3%
    2011q1 0.4%
    2011q2 1.3%


    Sure. The economy was shedding ~700,000 jobs a month when Obama took office, and unemployment was skyrocketing upwards.

    I agree Obama didn't take office on Jan 23 2009, snap his fingers, and then suddenly halt the job losses. The continued for several months.

    Mr. "Ownership Society" wasn't a Democrat.

    Before the stimulus, the economy was tanking at a -7% real rate, losing 700,000+ jobs a month, unemployment was skyrocketing, and the stock markets were crashing in the worst recession in 80 years. The housing market was destroyed and will take year to recover.

    Now the economy has been growing steadily for a year and a half, the private sector has created jobs every month for more than a year, stock markets are up about 70%, and the unemployment rate has fallen from above 10% to just above 9%, and 5 million private sector jobs have been added since Jan 2010.

    The stimilus which included large tax cuts and replacement for state spending, was only moderate size relative to the economy. But I disagree the data shows it didn't help.
    It was at about 6600 at its low in March 2009. Its up about 70% since then.

    You can't prove anything economically, but I would argue that the mere fact that the Govt intervened and was going to put some demand into the economy helped break the vicious cycle of fear that the country was gripped in, mitigating the damage.

    I appreciate you like to pretend 2001 and 2002 and 2003 didn't happen, and start with 2003 as a baseline instead of 2000, Clinton's last year.

    But the truth is, the 2003 tax cut was much smaller than the 2001 tax cut.

    When the tax cuts were passed, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated how much they might reduce revenue: the 2001 tax cuts was pegged at $1.35 trillion over 10 years; the 2003 tax cut was set at $350 billion over 10 years.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...e-bush-tax-cuts/2011/05/09/AFxTFtbG_blog.html


    Mr. "Ownership Society" was a progressive?

    Are you kidding me?

    To the contrary, we can compare the actual decline in revenues with the lower revenues attributed to the tax cuts.

    This is the cumulative decline in revenues:

    Year - decline in rev. from 2000
    2001 -34.0
    2002 -172.0
    2003 -242.9

    This is the effect on revenues from the tax cuts, according to the Center for Tax Justice:

    Effect on revenues of Bush tax cuts
    2001 -55
    2002 -125
    2003 -224

    The amount of revenues from the tax cuts corresponds pretty closely to the actual decrease in revenues.

    I'm sure the fact that the economy stopped tanking and turned around just as the stimulus was kicking in is just a massive coincidence.

    There are a lot of massive economic coincidences in the conservative view of economics, I've noticed.

    I see, and you're not speculating with your position things would be the same or better without the stimulus, hmmmmm?
     
  10. Phoebe Bump

    Phoebe Bump New Member

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    It must be nice to be able to shape-shift like that and pretend your bad judgements never happened.
     
  11. Wildjoker5

    Wildjoker5 Well-Known Member

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    There is sense in arguing with you when you think you can cherry pick stats but won't let anyone else. The fact that if both were allowed to cherry pick or neither of are, your guy is doing worse. You want to pretend that there was no decline in the jobs market at the beginning of Bush while "bolding and highlighting" there was one at the begining of Obama. The only differnce between the two presidents are the people that had control of the House and congress.
     
  12. JavaBlack

    JavaBlack New Member

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    Fair enough.
    But your earlier assertion is not.
    Failure of a policy to meet benchmarks is NOT proof that things would not have been worse without the policy.

    All you can claim is that the policy failed to meet benchmarks.
    All that really means in terms of evaluation is that study is needed to determine why and to determine if any other policy could have done better.
    It does not automatically mean that the policy was terrible, that the policy did nothing positive, that the policy was not better than nothing, or that a better policy option was available. Assuming any one of those things without further evidence is a fallacy.

    Getting the evidence necessary to back up those negative claims requires speculation about the past.
     
  13. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    There is a sense in discussing with your that when your factual allegations are proven wrong, you dodge and change the subject.
     
  14. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    But I'll be happy to put Obama up against Bush for equivalent terms in office:

    Bush vs. Obama at equivalent points in their presidencies (June 2011):

    Unemployment:
    Bush at this point in his presidency had a 2.1 percentage point increase in unemployment.
    Obama has had a 1.4 percentage point increase in unemployment.

    and the Deficit:
    Bush had a 285 billion increase in the deficit in his first full year
    Obama had a 179.5 billion decrease in the deficit in his first full year.

    and the stock market:
    The Dow had decreased 13% at this point in the Bush presidency
    The Dow has increased 47% at this point in the Obama presidency

    and GDP:
    Bush had a 0.7 percentage point improvement in GDP to 1.8% growth in his second year.
    Obama had a 5.5 percentage point improvement in GDP to 2.9% growth in his second year.

    It doesn't look to me like "my" guy is doing worse at all. Quite the contrary.
     
  15. JavaBlack

    JavaBlack New Member

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    I think people haven't paid much attention to how our sstem has been working.
    Mostly because it's not working.

    Our country has become far more polarized. We can speculate on the reasons all we want, but the fact is we are very polarized.
    The right has become more ideologically puritarian, as has the left (this is not symetrical in party effect, however, because the far-right outnumber the far-left, making up about half the GOP base-- self-described liberals aren't even a plurality of Democrats in some polls, but in any case do not reach that proportion).

    The result is that our system, which depends heavily on compromise and on restraint (i.e. not filibustering everything), is paralyzed.
    If we had a parliamentary system, this wouldn't happen. The majority would be ableto break deadlock and face the consequences. Instead we are in never-ending battles where nothing is done, no position is supported or discredited, and we end up nearly plunging the nation into default!

    During the time when Democrats were "in control" it was actualyl worse for them than if they were less in control.
    I'll explain and it really is obvious when you look:

    The current Senate rules (which both parties like more than they should) allow virtually unlimited power of the minority to filibuster. The GOP took this to a whole new level.

    To get a supermajority, the Democrats had to win many centrist and even conservative districts, thus swelling the Blue Dog caucus. Blue Dogs vote similarly to moderate Republicans but... this is what happened:
    1. Blue Dogs had to be won over before Republicans could even be approached.
    2. Republicans maintained party solidarity, helped by primary threats from Tea Partiers.

    The result: When Blue Dogs couldn't be won over, legislation failed.
    When Blue Dogs could be won over, often by turning policy into center-right plans (see ACA), Republicans were unanimously against and the dumbed-down media allowed them to claim that this was a result of Democrats not compromising.

    If these Blue Dogs had not won, if they were instead moderate Republicans, most likely the same bills would have passed and failed.
    THE ONLY difference would be that Democrats would get credit for compromising with moderate Republicans that they didn't get for compromising with Blue Dogs.

    So as it turns out, the Democratic majority was purely partisan, not ideological. And Democratic party solidarity was weak.

    So no, Democrats never actually had the control Republicans claim they did. Reid and Pelosi were in positions not much different from Boehner-- who you'll notie doesn't have a whole lot of control over his flock anymore.
     
  16. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Says the guy who claims that slowing the rate of revenue growth from 9% down to 7% proves Clinton tax increase was a success.

    Says the guy who claims there was no recession in 2001 or slowdown in the last half of 2000 before Bush was even elected.
     
  17. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Gee, another lie from you. What a surprise.

    Gee, another lie from you. What a surprise.
     
  18. DookieMan

    DookieMan New Member

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    I voted yes, but not completely sure on the history of it really. But it makes sense: It was a common Republican thought to keep taxes low but keep spending, so it makes sense that they just borrowed a ton of money.
     
  19. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Actually they increased revenues and kept spending increases below that which was bringing us to a balance budget but then the Democrats took control of the house.
     
  20. Bluesguy

    Bluesguy Well-Known Member Donor

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    Gee two lies from you, expected.
     
  21. Black Monarch

    Black Monarch New Member

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    There is a point at which lowering taxes will actually increase tax revenue because of the resulting economic growth. However, these increases aren't seen for a few years after the cuts occur. At the very least, the tax-cuts helped to mitigate the recession that occurred as a result of 9/11 and the collapse of the dot-com bubble.
     
  22. Iriemon

    Iriemon Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Really? Please show my lies, and link to my post where I have ever claimed that "slowing the rate of revenue growth from 9% down to 7% proves Clinton tax increase was a success."

    And then please link to my post where I ever claimed "there was no recession in 2001 or slowdown in the last half of 2000 before Bush was even elected."

    More fabrication.
     

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