Alan Greenspan To GOP: Let Bush Tax Cuts Lapse

[Modbert]

Alan Greenspan To GOP: Let Bush Tax Cuts Lapse | The Seminal

“They should follow the law and let [Bush's tax cuts] lapse,” Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” citing a need for the tax revenue to reduce the federal budget deficit. [...]

Greenspan, in a telephone conversation after his Bloomberg TV interview was taped, said his position is that all the expiring Bush tax cuts should end, for middle-class and high- income families alike.

Ending the cuts “probably will” slow growth, Greenspan, 84, said in the TV interview. The risk posed by inaction on the deficit is greater, he said.

“Unless we start to come to grips with this long-term outlook, we are going to have major problems,” said Greenspan, who led the U.S. central bank from 1987 to 2006. “I think we misunderstand the momentum of this deficit going forward.”

Here, he more or less lays responsibility for the huge deficit problems we now face at the doorsteps of the Bush Administration:

Greenspan said reducing the deficit is “going to be far more difficult than anybody imagines” after “a decade of major increases in federal spending and major tax cuts.”

Ironic, this coming from the guy who foolhardily endorsed Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, thereby helping to lay the ground work for the massive deficit expansion.

Regardless, this will hopefully take some of the wind out of the GOP/Tea Party sails — these self-proclaimed ‘fiscal warriors’. After all, they have championed two grotesquely incompatible positions: debt reduction AND tax cuts.

But a week ago their credibility as self-proclaimed ‘deficit hawks’ was called into question by none other than Chris Wallace (their own mascot) on The Fox News Channel (their home field). And the ensuing fallout continues to reverberate across the main stream media and blogosphere.

Thoughts USMB?

 

[Yurt]

1. it proves liberals who say pubs walk in lockstep are hacks

2. greenspan has seen his day and its good he no longer runs the show....i don't think slowing growth is good....

3. when obama follows the law and returns the bailout money to US coffers, then and only then should we start talking about following the law...the tax cuts could be extended or simply make a new law continuing the tax cuts by order of law, so no idea what greenspan is talking about

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Why anyone would take what Alan Greenspan, the man most responsible for our current economic mess, says seriously is beyond me. This should also put to rest the silly idea that Greenspan favors free markets.

 

[Shogun]

Why anyone would take what Alan Greenspan, the man most responsible for our current economic mess, says seriously is beyond me. This should also put to rest the silly idea that Greenspan favors free markets.

or, he's just learned the lesson that many free market capitalistas refuse to admit..

 

[Wry Catcher]

Platitude: Tax cuts will shrink the deficit.

Fact: Nope. Tax cuts to consumers will stimulate the economy. Tax cuts need to be targeted and stimulus money needs to be targeted too.

 

[Paulie]

I find it interesting that cutting spending is seen as politically unfavorable, but somehow raising taxes isn't. Taxes raise and lower all the time, but spending continues on unabated.

The GOP has no balls to cut spending, but has the audacity to criticize tax hikes.

I'm not even going to comment on Greenspan other than to say it seems pretty convenient for the left to subscribe to the idea that somehow all the sudden NOW he's had some kind of economic epiphany. He's seen plenty of economic turmoil in his life and career. All the sudden he's now just becoming a liberal Keynesian?

Please.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Why anyone would take what Alan Greenspan, the man most responsible for our current economic mess, says seriously is beyond me. This should also put to rest the silly idea that Greenspan favors free markets.

or, he's just learned the lesson that many free market capitalistas refuse to admit..

Or maybe it's impossible for the chief central banker to be a free market capitalist, because central banking is the antithesis of a free market.

 

[Oddball]

Suddenly, the left finds Greenspan credible.

Incredible.

 

[Truthmatters]

Maybe the unfettered market has never worked in the history of man

 

[Oddball]

Show us the last time it was tried.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Dems still control everything, right?

Why is Greenspan even addressing Republicans?

Do you see how demented he is?

 

[boedicca]

Greenspan jumped the shark intellectually when he became chairman of the Fed.

Arthur Laffer is a far more rational thinker - unlike those who are willing to sign a mutual suicide pact of economic policies based on Class Warfare.

Tax reduction thus sets off a process that can bring gains for everyone, gains won by marshalling resources that would otherwise stand idle—workers without jobs and farm and factory capacity without markets. Yet many taxpayers seemed prepared to deny the nation the fruits of tax reduction because they question the financial soundness of reducing taxes when the federal budget is already in deficit. Let me make clear why, in today's economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarged the federal deficit—why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.

—President John F. Kennedy,
Economic Report of the President,

January 1963

If only more of today's leaders thought like JFK. Sadly, in the debate over whether to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and if so whether the cuts should be extended to those people who are in the highest tax bracket, there is a false presumption that higher tax rates on the top 1% of income earners will raise tax revenues.

Anyone who is familiar with the historical data available from the IRS knows full well that raising income tax rates on the top 1% of income earners will most likely reduce the direct tax receipts from the now higher taxed income—even without considering the secondary tax revenue effects, all of which will be negative. And who on Earth wants higher tax rates on anyone if it means larger deficits?...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...5393882112674598.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop


IOW, if one's objective is to Soak The Rich, one ends up Hosing Oneself.

 

[Paulie]

Show us the last time it was tried.

Oh, uuhhh...

The 1800's, and stuff. There was like, some times in there where they uuhhh...tried it and stuff. And like, it didn't work at alllllll, man.

 

[Trajan]

In 97 he was all for them, then 03, luke warm now dead set against....meanwhile at the same time his reputation has nosed dived as his policies helped get us here....I don't think I am convinced by anything he says presently...

 

[mal]

Alan Greenspan To GOP: Let Bush Tax Cuts Lapse | The Seminal

“They should follow the law and let [Bush's tax cuts] lapse,” Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” citing a need for the tax revenue to reduce the federal budget deficit. [...]

Greenspan, in a telephone conversation after his Bloomberg TV interview was taped, said his position is that all the expiring Bush tax cuts should end, for middle-class and high- income families alike.

Ending the cuts “probably will” slow growth, Greenspan, 84, said in the TV interview. The risk posed by inaction on the deficit is greater, he said.

“Unless we start to come to grips with this long-term outlook, we are going to have major problems,” said Greenspan, who led the U.S. central bank from 1987 to 2006. “I think we misunderstand the momentum of this deficit going forward.”

Ironic, this coming from the guy who foolhardily endorsed Bush’s 2001 tax cuts, thereby helping to lay the ground work for the massive deficit expansion.

Regardless, this will hopefully take some of the wind out of the GOP/Tea Party sails — these self-proclaimed ‘fiscal warriors’. After all, they have championed two grotesquely incompatible positions: debt reduction AND tax cuts.

But a week ago their credibility as self-proclaimed ‘deficit hawks’ was called into question by none other than Chris Wallace (their own mascot) on The Fox News Channel (their home field). And the ensuing fallout continues to reverberate across the main stream media and blogosphere.

Thoughts USMB?

You are Quoting the guy who walked out the Door just before the Economy Fell into this Deep Recession...

And after he had been there for 20 years...

Give that some Thought.

As for Hoping that the Debt will be Serviced if the Tax Cuts are allowed to Lapse...

Here's my Response to that:

Spending would have to be CUT... THEN the Debt would have to be Serviced with other Cuts.

The Government is the only one really Creating Jobs right now and it can't Pay Debt with Jobs it's Creating with Debt.

Fucking Liberals are so derned stooooooooooopid!...



peace...

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Platitude: Tax cuts will shrink the deficit.

Fact: Nope. Tax cuts to consumers will stimulate the economy. Tax cuts need to be targeted and stimulus money needs to be targeted too.

$850B Epic Fail, son.

Reagan's entire 1982 budget was less than the failed "Stimulus"

Your post should be a new Epic Fail poster

 

[Douger]

That's probably the first intelligent thing ever to slobber out of that assholes mouth.