Bush’s Tax Cuts For the Rich: Destroying Our Revenue Base, Harming Our Economy

[avaistheone1]

The drive to reclaim George W. Bush’s economic record has begun sooner than we thought.

The new right-wing talking point we’ve been hearing on talk radio, on Fox and in certain blogs is that the Bush years “generated record revenues.” This, despite the fact that the man had eight years to take surpluses as far as the eye could see and turn them into eight straight years of deficits.

Of course, this is nonsense. The Bush tax cuts absolutely reduced revenues and increased deficits over the course of President Bush’s tenure in office. Revenue actually fell during the Bush years in real dollars, which is shocking, because it’s the only time that’s happened in the past 60 years. Combine that with trying to fight two wars on the cheap, and you have the root cause of our country’s deficits. Dismantling our revenue base effectively dismantles the engine of our economic prosperity.

It’s not a coincidence that demagogues are pushing this line now. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are about to expire, and supporters of ensuring that the rich keep getting richer at the expense of everyone else have decided that it’s time to abandon any connection to reality to sell their tax-cut snake oil.


http://pulse.ncpolicywatch.org/2010/08/26/bushs-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-destroying-our-revenue-base-harming-our-economy/

[kentuck]

1. Instead of a $5 trillion dollar surplus....

Bush ran us into debt by $5 trillion. That is a $10 trillion dollar turn-around in only 8 years. Not bad, huh?

[AndyA]

2. The deficit QUADRUPLED under George W. Bush.

When it came to money, he was like a whore with a new box of condoms and a ship full of drunken sailors pulling into port.