Dick Armey Defends Bush Tax Cuts On Meet The Press
After years of demagoguing the Bush tax cuts, Democrats are faced with a dilemma. They’re in a tough re-election cycle, and despite years of calling the Bush-era tax cuts “tax cuts for the rich” they’re having to tacitly admit that they weren’t just for the rich. That, in fact, letting the Bush tax cuts expire would mean effective tax hikes for a lot of people.
Dick Armey appeared on Meet The Press today and disputed the notion, put forward by everyone from Paul Krugman to Alan Greenspan, that the Bush tax cuts should be allowed to expire to combat federal deficits.
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I don’t think that federal tax cuts pay for themselves all the time, but I don’t see how anyone can say that the Bush tax cuts created deficits. Here’s a chart showing federal tax revenues during the era of the Bush tax cuts:
Note the rise in revenues after the 2003 implementation of the Bush tax cuts.
Here’s another chart showing our budget deficit post-Bush tax cuts:
Note, again, that federal deficits went down after the Bush tax cuts. In fact, our federal government actually broke tax receipt records after the Bush tax cuts. The only reason why we ran deficits during this time is that federal spending (shamefully done under a Republican Congress/President) grew faster than the rate of growth in tax receipts, as you can see from this chart:
And when the bottom fell out of our economy, thanks to the financial sector collapse brought on by government meddling in the lending markets, tax receipts fell with the economy even as government spending accelerated under Obama.
The point of all this is that our government is too large and costs too much money. Our political leaders spent too much when the Bush tax cuts were driving economic prosperity, and they’re spending too much now even as they justify that spending with claims of economic stimulus.
The only reason this is being debated is because so many of our political leaders simply don’t want to stop spending. Because it would mean decreasing their power and influence, as well as admitting that they’re part of the problem.
Tags: bush tax cuts, deficits, dick armey, Economy, meet the press, national debt
