like abortion and immigration
http://news.yahoo.com/abortion-immigration-changes-among-2012-laws-174958515.html
http://news.yahoo.com/abortion-immigration-changes-among-2012-laws-174958515.html
conservatives are more interested in social engineering than providing jobs
- Thread starter Don Quixote
- Start date
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Guns Guns Guns
Guest
Over 10 years of tax cuts for the rich...where are the jobs?
gone overseas
G
Guns Guns Guns
Guest
This story begins in January 2001, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency.
He’d promised to enact a $1.3 trillion tax cut. (The number had increased during the campaign.)
He took office with Republican majorities in favor of tax cuts—with conditions. His treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, and his inherited Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, had conditions, too.
On Jan. 5, 2001, the two men met and agreed on a way to cut taxes without risking huge deficits. They would back them, but suggest “triggers” that canceled them out if the surpluses melted way. “A good enough idea,” said O’Neill, “if it can be sold.”
It wasn’t sold. For starters, the Bush administration didn’t want the triggers.
Republicans running the House and Senate budget committees didn’t want them, either.
Had the triggers been put in place, the events of 2001 would have started taking the tax cuts apart. Instead, the tax cuts went into effect just as the government spent more money on emergencies.
In 2002, the deficit returned at $159 billion. Bush OMB director Mitch Daniels told the nation to relax; “the unexpected surge in revenues toward the end of the last decade was temporary, and that revenues are returning to historic levels for reasons unrelated to legislated change.”
In 2003, the deficit grew to $374 billion. That was the year that the Iraq war began, and it was the year that Republicans, back in control of the entire Congress, passed a new tax cut package that accelerated the changes of 2001.
Sure, the Bush rates were incompatible with the costs of war and the welfare state. They would also expire on Jan. 1, 2011, a timeline that reflected the limits of long-term budgeting and made the tax cuts look less costly.
They wouldn’t bind a hypothetical future Congress. They’d just bet on the tax cuts being hard to undo. “The idea,” said former Majority Leader Dick Armey—now chairman of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks—“was to get the best we could for the longest we could.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ear_old_blunder_doomed_deficit_reduction.html
He’d promised to enact a $1.3 trillion tax cut. (The number had increased during the campaign.)
He took office with Republican majorities in favor of tax cuts—with conditions. His treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, and his inherited Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, had conditions, too.
On Jan. 5, 2001, the two men met and agreed on a way to cut taxes without risking huge deficits. They would back them, but suggest “triggers” that canceled them out if the surpluses melted way. “A good enough idea,” said O’Neill, “if it can be sold.”
It wasn’t sold. For starters, the Bush administration didn’t want the triggers.
Republicans running the House and Senate budget committees didn’t want them, either.
Had the triggers been put in place, the events of 2001 would have started taking the tax cuts apart. Instead, the tax cuts went into effect just as the government spent more money on emergencies.
In 2002, the deficit returned at $159 billion. Bush OMB director Mitch Daniels told the nation to relax; “the unexpected surge in revenues toward the end of the last decade was temporary, and that revenues are returning to historic levels for reasons unrelated to legislated change.”
In 2003, the deficit grew to $374 billion. That was the year that the Iraq war began, and it was the year that Republicans, back in control of the entire Congress, passed a new tax cut package that accelerated the changes of 2001.
Sure, the Bush rates were incompatible with the costs of war and the welfare state. They would also expire on Jan. 1, 2011, a timeline that reflected the limits of long-term budgeting and made the tax cuts look less costly.
They wouldn’t bind a hypothetical future Congress. They’d just bet on the tax cuts being hard to undo. “The idea,” said former Majority Leader Dick Armey—now chairman of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks—“was to get the best we could for the longest we could.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...ear_old_blunder_doomed_deficit_reduction.html