Why are the Bush tax cuts bad?

[The Rabbi]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

You don't cut taxes while increasing spending by the hundreds of billions to trillion is just 1 logical answer....

Also, they were heavily weighted so that my girlfriend got a $45,000 dollar tax cut while social security, paid by the working class, was being used to mask the budget deficits...

If tax cuts had to be given, most all of the tax break money should have gone towards the working class, whose SS surplus money was being used to pay for/mask what income taxes should have been paying for.... the supposed projected surplus in tax monies that Bush wanted to give back ''to the people paying taxes'', was OUR social Security surpluses, of which wealthy people like romney, didn't even pay...yet disproportionally got as a tax cut...

You're really not very good at this, are you?

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

Not a prob.......​

"The curious may want to know why the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in the first place. After all, if then-President George W. Bush and Congress thought they were a good idea when they passed them in the early 2000s, why make them temporary?

The answer is that President Bush and a complicit Congress didn’t want to show the magnitude of the deficits that would result from their tax cuts. To hide those deficits as they were pushing them through they used a variety of accounting tricks. One of those tricks was attaching expiration dates so that, on paper, there wouldn’t be any long-term costs. This made the long-term deficit picture look fairly rosy on paper even as it doomed Bush’s successor and the current Congress to cleaning up the mess."

Let the Bush Tax Cuts....DIE-ON-THE-VINE!!!
December 2012​

"Virtually every economics Ph.D. who has worked in a prominent role in the Bush Administration acknowledges that the tax cuts enacted during the past six years have not paid for themselves--and were never intended to."

The "War President's" ECONOMIC-HU$TLE​

 

[Mr. Shaman]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

They were sold to the public as a means to create jobs which they have not. They added trillions to the deficit.

Hell......they were (merely) a means to GIVE AWAY.......

.....BILL CLINTON'S $URPLU$!!!!!

"Eight years ago, our future was at risk," Clinton said Wednesday morning. "Economic growth was low, unemployment was high, interest rates were high, the federal debt had quadrupled in the previous 12 years. When Vice President Gore and I took office, the budget deficit was $290 billion, and it was projected this year the budget deficit would be $455 billion."

Instead, the president explained, the $5.7 trillion national debt has been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years -- $223 billion this year alone."​

.....and, NOW......the high-roller$/1%ers have the Teabaggers CONVINCED we only need to make Minimum Monthly Payments (on our Debt)......and, we should QUITE BOTHERING THE HIGH-ROLLER$/1%ers TO KICK-IN THEIR SHARE!!!!!​

 

[editec]

The extra cash did NOT go back into production in the USA.

Mostly it went into gambling on DEBT INSTRUMENTS or into investments offshore.

Had that money stayed in the USA, either as investments in production or even if it has just been spent, it would have had a positive benefit.

 

[sfcalifornia]

What's worse is America funded two expensive wars during the Bush tax cuts which meant the money to fund these wars had to be taken from elsewhere, like building and maintaning America's infrastructure. Iraq is screwed, the American people were screwed. Haliburton was the only winner here. Coincidence?

Idiot, all those shitheads who supported the Iraq war weren't doing it for the sake of Haliburton. They were doing it for Israel. They are traders to America, willing to sacrifice American freedom, treasure, and blood in service of a rogue and anti-Christian foreign state.

Hey dumbfuck, I don't see Israel in a better position today than they were before the Iraq war. Haliburton was the only winner. A $7 billion no-bid contract awarded to Kellogg Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, during a meeting in February 2003, just one month before the invasion of Iraq began. Yeah, go ahead and tell me they were doing it for Israel, jackass. We never go to war unless something's in it for us! There's money to be made in war.

 

[ScienceRocks]

The next time we must go to war, we should just nuke the threat. Period...End of story.

 

[Lakhota]

The next time we must go to war, we should just nuke the threat. Period...End of story.

When did we last "must" go to war?

 

[ScienceRocks]

the next time we must go to war, we should just nuke the threat. Period...end of story.

when did we last "must" go to war?

1812?

 

[auditor0007]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

They were sold to the public as a means to create jobs which they have not. They added trillions to the deficit.

Actually, they were not sold to the public as a means to create jobs. Bush sold American on the tax cuts because the CBO was estimating that we were looking at some very large tax surpluses down the road. Bush felt that most of that money should go back to taxpayers. When he and the Republicans pushed for those cuts, they agreed that should tax revenues fall, then the tax cuts would need to be rescinded. It was only after 9/11 and the ensuing recession that Republicans doubled down on the tax cuts as being the best way to get the economy moving again, and for a short time it actually worked. The recession ended and tax revenues increased. The problem was that most of the growth was based on the housing bubble, and we know what happened once that burst.

The problem with the tax cuts, is that taxes were cut so low that once the economy tanked, revenues didn't just dip a little, they bottomed out, and this was following a period where they had already been dropping as a percentage of GDP. By 2009, revenues had dropped by almost 27% compared to 2000 as a percentage of GDP. That 27% drop in revenue was equal to approximately $760 billion in tax revenue.

 

[Clementine]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

Dems hate lower tax rates because it's less money to buy voters. The main focus has been on increasing welfare. I don't call those 'entitlements' because they aren't entitled to other people's money. It's charity and many don't appreciate where the money comes from. The real entitlements are pensions and social security that people paid into for years.

And they shouldn't be called tax cuts, but rather reasonable tax rates. The Dems like to say they are letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire. What it means is that we will all pay more taxes thanks to them. It's a tax increase that the Dems want and they should call it what it is.

The government can never stay within a budget. There isn't enough money in this entire country, even if they took all the money people have, to cover their spending.

 

[The Rabbi]

Can you explain to me why the Bush tax cuts are bad? I wish to try to understand this. I thought they focused on the middle income and upwards.

Thanks.

They were sold to the public as a means to create jobs which they have not. They added trillions to the deficit.

Actually, they were not sold to the public as a means to create jobs. Bush sold American on the tax cuts because the CBO was estimating that we were looking at some very large tax surpluses down the road. Bush felt that most of that money should go back to taxpayers. When he and the Republicans pushed for those cuts, they agreed that should tax revenues fall, then the tax cuts would need to be rescinded. It was only after 9/11 and the ensuing recession that Republicans doubled down on the tax cuts as being the best way to get the economy moving again, and for a short time it actually worked. The recession ended and tax revenues increased. The problem was that most of the growth was based on the housing bubble, and we know what happened once that burst.

The problem with the tax cuts, is that taxes were cut so low that once the economy tanked, revenues didn't just dip a little, they bottomed out, and this was following a period where they had already been dropping as a percentage of GDP. By 2009, revenues had dropped by almost 27% compared to 2000 as a percentage of GDP. That 27% drop in revenue was equal to approximately $760 billion in tax revenue.

Where were you expatting at during this time?
Everything you wrote is completely wrong. The cuts came after 9/11 durng the recession. The idea was to get people back to work. The Dems insisted on throwing in more sops to the underclass--tax deductions when they paid no tax and tax rebates. Remember those $200 checks?
It worked, btw. One of the shortest recessions on record. Unlike the present policy, which has given us one of the longest.