Tax cuts don't pay for themselves....

[originalpckelly]

unless taxes are too high. However, the CBO director says that they weren't too high, at least from all the analysis, so the tax cuts actually ended up not paying for themselves.

Now on the other hand he says that giving the ability to negotiate drug prices to the government will not result in a significant cost savings, and that giving that authority is too vague to make a good budgetary analysis.

[originalpckelly]

1. This is coming out of the Budget Committee now on C-SPAN 1

[Ignacio Upton]

2. We could start seeing surpluses again in 2012

If we allow the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010.

[keta11]

3. No, no, no

In 2012, Sean Hannity will tell us the Bush tax cuts created the surplus. And he never cites where he got his Phd in macro Economics from!!

[Hidden Stillness]

4. Tax Cuts Make Everything Worse

Just a few points on this recent CBO crap. Like all of the other Departments of the Bush/Cheney Administration, the agencies that used to provide objective statistics, budgets, and other records that can be used and relied on, no longer do. The Labor Dept. and the Commerce Dept. have already been proved to be giving fake figures about unemployment, job creation, deficit, standard of living, etc., and even their own budgets (when they submit them at all anymore).

The point first about how allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices as a bulk purchase, so older people will save, will actually save almost nothing, is preposterous. Just comparing the difference between V.A. prices, and the "Medicare" (pharmaceutical/insurance industry) Part D prices, shows huge differences. I did not hear the comments today, because I can't stand to listen to these crooks, but I heard a twisted-up, lying version of this routine a few days ago, and it may be the same. The liar, who may have been this same CBO head, began by conflating the general Federal budget and the Medicare prescription budget costs, and by going back and forth, actually "proved" that negotiating the prices will not affect the general budget, (because of Republicans' endless tax cuts and subsidies, and undercutting the earning power of American workers). It will not affect the deficit or debt, etc. This was actually the routine, and I don't remember anyone challenging the deliberate confusion of things. Negotiating prices as a bulk purchase will save people on Medicare millions of dollars...but Republicans don't want to do that.

Also, on tax cuts generally: when there is a debt to pay, (the huge Republican Federal debt), then cutting taxes will solve nothing--the debt is still there, it is still everyone's debt, and it still has to be paid. It will actually be worse, as it will be more with interest, as it is now paid off slower. Tax cuts to rich people never help the economy, because they do not run out and buy retail, local things, as middle class and poor people would have, they invest or save, changing nothing, and many of their purchases are foriegn luxury goods, needless to say, helping nothing. Countries with low taxes are never the best economies; countries have higher taxes exactly because they have economic activity going on, that is taxed.

We are not even the best economy in the world anymore because of Bush and Cheney anyway, but have slipped to 5th or whatever it is. Taxes pay for the activities of Government, such as programs to help citizens, getting them back to their own lives, and by hiring contractors to maintain infrastructure, etc., helping the economy. Cutting taxes kills the effectiveness of Government programs, for such a miniscule amount paid to each individual--or, as usual, shifted onto the middle class for no gain at all--that it is never worth it. Lowering prices or raising wages or amounts of money for those on fixed incomes are the only things that help and revive an economy. The obvious proof of all this, is that there was no Federal deficit at all, there was a surplus from the Clinton budget, until Bush/Cheney's July 2001 massive two tax cuts to rich people. Case closed, Sherlock.