ThoughtCrimes
Old Navy Vet
This thread is a prime example of liberals avoiding facts, citing errant or misleading data, and then pronouncing themselves the winners. A few facts, taken from federal budget data and from Federal Reserve reports (the federal budget data are carried on the Tax Policy Center's website; the Federal Reserve reports are cited with separate links):
* In the 4 years following the 2003 tax cuts, federal revenue grew more than it did during any 4-year period of Clinton's presidency. After 2003, revenue rose from $1.78 trillion in 2003 to $2.56 trillion in 2007, an increase of $780 billion (I mistakenly typed $480 billion in previous replies, but I have the correct number in my article). During the best 4 revenue years of Clinton's tenure, revenue rose from $1.45 trillion in 1996 to $2.02 trillion in 2000, an increase of $557 billion. That's $780 billion under Bush vs. $557 billion under Clinton.
* Even though liberals here seem to assume that Clinton did nothing but raise taxes, in point of fact Clinton raised some taxes but substantially cut other taxes. Clinton created a new $500 child tax credit, raised the income limit for deductible IRAs, nearly doubled the estate tax exemption, and slashed the capital gains tax rate by a whopping 28%, the largest reduction in the capital gains tax up to that point in history.
* In Obama's 4 best years of revenue, revenue went from $2.16 trillion in 2010 to $3.02 trillion in 2014, an increase of $846 billion. (My earlier comparison was based on 3-year periods, not 4-year.) So Bush's revenue growth came close to Obama's revenue growth, even though he slashed taxes across the board, whereas Obama has raised taxes on the top two brackets and has imposed a host of other tax hikes. And, of course, under Obama, taxpayers have less money in their pockets than they did under Bush, since Obama has sucked hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy with his tax hikes. Liberals gauge success by how much money the government has, whereas conservatives gauge success by how much money people get to keep of their own money.
* Bush's federal revenue increase came with 52 consecutive months of economic growth, an increase in median family income, and a substantial reduction in the real unemployment rate (the U-6).
* Obama's federal revenue increase has come with the weakest recovery in modern history (which has included two quarters of negative GDP growth--1Q 2014 and 1Q 2015), a decline in median family income, a weakened labor force participation rate, and a historically high real unemployment rate (U-6). Indeed, the average U-6 rate under Obama has been much higher than it was under Bush, as anyone can confirm by checking the U-6 rate for Bush's and Obama's presidencies.
* The 2008 recession was not "Bush's recession." That is ridiculous. The major cause of the recession was Freddie and Fannie's disastrous intervention in the housing market, which led to Freddie and Fannie securing or financing hundreds of billions of dollars in risky home loans. As a Federal Reserve report notes, "By 2003, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac accounted for 52.3% of all residential mortgage loans outstanding" (https://research.stlouisfed.org/conferences/gse/Van_Order.pdf.). In addition," during 2001-2003, the GSEs [i.e., Freddie and Fannie] funded nearly 70% of all mortgages originated; from 2004-2006, the GSE share of new mortgages was 47%, 41%, and 40%, respectively" (https://research.stlouisfed.org/conferences/gse/Van_Order.pdf).
As a result of this massive federal intervention, the number of higher-risk home loans (sub-prime and Alt-A) exploded, starting in 2003. I quote from another Federal Reserve report:
Despite these concerns, lending to risky borrowers grew rapidly in the 2000s, as shown in Table 1. The number of subprime mortgages originated nearly doubled from 1.1 million in 2003 to 1.9 million in 2005. Near-prime Alt-A originations grew at an even faster rate, from 304,000 in 2003 to 1.1 million in 2005. In dollar terms, nonprime mortgages represented 32 percent of all mortgage originations in 2005, more than triple their 10 percent share only two years earlier (Inside Mortgage Finance, 2008). (http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2008/200859/200859pap.pdf)
And, as the Republicans had repeatedly warned, this explosion in high-risk loans led to disaster. I again quote the Federal Reserve report:
The share of subprime mortgages that were seriously delinquent increased from about 5.6 percent in mid-2005 to over 21 percent in July 2008. Alt-A mortgages saw an even greater proportional increase from a low of 0.6 to over 9 percent over the same time period. (http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2008/200859/200859pap.pdf)
These failed high-risk home loans were then bundled into the "toxic assets" that did so much damage to the financial sector and the economy.
Now, as is documented on YouTube and in the Congressional Record, Bush and the Republicans tried repeatedly to halt the explosion in high-risk home loans by trying to prevent Freddie and Fannie from backing and financing so many of them. But the Democrats blocked every one of these efforts and even insisted Freddie and Fannie were totally solvent and doing just fine.
So we can place most of the blame for the recession squarely on those who refused to stop Freddie and Fannie's fatal intervention that greatly accelerated the increase in high-risk home loans. If there had not been so many bad home loans, there would have been far fewer such loans to bundle into toxic assets in the first place.
Does this post relate/support to the points you cobbled together in the OP? You know, your debunked assertions that a period of record Treasury receipts were SINGULARLY a result of the 2003 Bush tax cuts? Now you've shifted to a third premise since the two previous were resoundingly debunked.
This time you've chosen to move the goal posts once again to avoid answering, responding, speaking to, any of points made debunking your oversimplified and faulty assertions. That is a silent declaration by you that you simply won't because you can't negate any of the counter arguments heaped at your feet. And I'm not going to take the time and energy to correct the factual errors, point to the logical errors and deride the absurd conclusions in your post above!
Have a nice Day!