Most economists agree there's little choice but to end tax cuts from George W. Bush's era. That means the fiscal war in Washington is only going to get uglier
You won't find a truer believer in the big tax cuts of the George W. Bush era than Glenn Hubbard, the lanky, 51-year-old economist who is dean of Columbia Business School. The Republican academic was instrumental in designing the tax cuts, first as a Bush campaign insider and then as the President's first chief economic adviser. The idea behind the cuts, enacted in 2001 and 2003, was to encourage work, savings, and investment, thus stimulating long-term economic growth. Hubbard is especially proud of the 2003 cut in taxes on dividends and capital gains, which he calls "the most pro-growth tax reform that anybody did since Kennedy."
Now that the Bush tax cuts are coming up for renewal—they expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress acts—Hubbard has a queasy feeling about them. The cuts, he says, have been undermined by years of deficits. Until the trajectory of spending changes, he says, "deficits are just future taxes. You're just talking about taxes today vs. taxes tomorrow."
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Partisan politics will end up forcing bad tax policies on the citizenry. Seems to me it's pretty common sense to:
ReplyDelete#1 Keep the middleclass tax cuts
#2 Stop providing a net return to those who don't make enough to pay income tax
#3 leave the investment taxes (capital gains etc.) alone or lower them for everyone. In fact, eliminate all investment taxes for the middle class so that they can save and hopefully join the upper class by the time they retire.
#4 decrease taxes for international companies that maintain a certain percentage of their workforce in the US
#5 lower taxes for foreign companies creating jobs in the US
#6 allow the cuts on the rich (the 250,000 cut off will not effect the vast majority of your taxes including small business owners) to expire
Who thinks any of these commons sense ideas will make it through the partisan firestorm.
get him a chain saw and send him out in the yard...lol
ReplyDeletethe Bush tax cuts all ended up in Wal-mart and Anheuser Busch's pockets
ReplyDeletelittle of it was used to consolidate dept or was saved or invested
"Most economists" means most politically correct economists. I doubt that Art Laffer, Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell would agree would agree with the government economists.
ReplyDeleteIncreasing taxes on higher income people has always reduced revenues. THese people can control how they receive the income.
I'm as conservative as they come, but the economic polices of that adminstration were poor at best.
ReplyDeleteBush's tax cut's worked very well. If you remember we were in a recession when he took office and thanks to his policies we had a record breaking economy until Pelosi and Reed took control of Congress then it all went south !
ReplyDelete2:30, do people like you actually look at the facts before speaking. Just like the Clinton economy, the success of the Bush economy was the result of a bubble. That bubble has burst, now look where we are at. Worse than what we were when it started.
ReplyDeleteBush put it all on a credit card, 2 wars, tax cuts, unfunded medicare drug program. Got him elected, see where it got us.
ReplyDeleteHey stupid what caused the bust ? Could it have been the regulation of bank loans that Clinton forced followed by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd looking the other way ?
ReplyDeleteWhatever Obama is doing is messing up the economy instead of fixing it . We need conservatism at this point .
ReplyDelete8:30 or could it have been investment housing and vacation homes as well as the derivatives used to fund easy credit (which was used by investors) during this period? Do us all a favor and look up the stats on foreclosures homey before you spout the BS that Rush fed you.
ReplyDelete