Mods: this is only a small part of the article...
Make the pie higher!"
This final item (a misstatement of the concept of putting more money into the hands of Americans by reducing taxes to grow the economy and enlarge the economic "pie" that everyone shares -- i.e., making the pie "bigger" rather than "higher") is the phrase perhaps most often cited as an example of "Bushisms," so much so that it was used for the title of the poem quoted at the head of this page. And it is a real quote, something Bush said during the course of a 15 February 2000 Republican debate (moderated by CNN host Larry King) in Columbia, South Carolina, between Texas Governor George W. Bush, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and former Reagan administration official Ambassador Alan Keyes:
The difference between our plans is, I know whose money it is we're dealing with. We're dealing with the government -- we're dealing with the people's money, not the government's money. And I want to give people their money back.
And if you're going to have a tax cut, everybody ought to have a tax cut. This kind of Washington, D.C., view about targeted tax cuts is tax cuts driven by polls and focus groups. If you pay taxes in America, you ought to get a tax cut.
Under my plan, if you're a family of four in South Carolina, making $50,000, you get 50-percent tax cut. I've reduced the lower rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, which does this -- and this is important. There are people on the outskirts of poverty, like single moms who are working the toughest job in America. If she has two kids, and making $22,000, for every additional dollar she earns, she pays a higher marginal rate on her taxes than someone making $200,000.
You bet I cut the taxes at the top. That encourages entrepreneurship. What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy. We ought to make the pie higher.
This one initially posed something of a mystery to us, because transcripts of the debate prepared by the Federal Document Clearing House and CNN attribute the block of text quoted above to Senator John McCain, not Governor Bush. However, the immediately preceding question had clearly been posed to Governor Bush, and newspaper accounts the following morning noted the "make the pie higher" comment as something uttered by Governor Bush:
Bush, shedding his sometimes goofy demeanor, was as animated and forceful as he has been in any debate, punching the air with his fist to underscore his words. He scored points among the party faithful in calling for an end to the Clinton era in Washington -- one of the money lines of the night.
On taxes and bringing prosperity to struggling working mothers, however, Bush mangled one metaphor: "We ought to make the pie higher."14
Moreover, at a Radio/TV correspondents' dinner in Washington, D.C., a few weeks later, Governor Bush made humorous use of the item with no indication that the words weren't his own:
Now most people would say in speaking of the economy, "We ought to make the pie bigger." I, however, am on record saying, "We ought to make the pie higher."
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/piehigher.asp 
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