DEMOCRATS ON THE TAX CUT
Oh, that horrible, “massive” Bush tax cut. How “irresponsible!”
Every single day that passes you hear wails and screams from our big-spending Democrat friends --- wails and screams over the Bush tax cut and our “shrinking surplus.”
OK --- time for a little reality check here. John Barry is the director of research and the chief economist for the Tax Foundation. You might be interested in what he found when he looked into some budget figures.
Let’s talk about non-defense discretionary spending. This is spending that congress has to appropriate and approve every single year. During the federal budgets of Clinton’s first term this spending category rose by 2.8% a year. During the budgets of Clinton’s second term this spending rose by 6% a year. Remember, folks. This was that era when Clinton was vetoing budgets and shutting down government operations just to get more spending on his various domestic vote-buying programs.
OK --- so we have a difference of 3.2% in discretionary spending from Clinton’s first term to the second. How much money are we talking about? Well, it totals up to $117 billion dollars.
So --- hear this. If Clinton and the Democrats had managed to hold down their spending splurge the surplus at the beginning of this year would have been $117 more than it is. That would have been enough to cover the first two years of the Republican tax cut.
The problem isn’t cutting taxes. The problem is raising spending. For instance:
$200,000 to study international asparagus competitiveness
$5,000,000 for the National Sheep Industry Improvement Center
$3,000,000 to study reverse commuting in Oklahoma
Yeah --- that tax cut was certainly not needed. Right?
Oh, that horrible, “massive” Bush tax cut. How “irresponsible!”
Every single day that passes you hear wails and screams from our big-spending Democrat friends --- wails and screams over the Bush tax cut and our “shrinking surplus.”
OK --- time for a little reality check here. John Barry is the director of research and the chief economist for the Tax Foundation. You might be interested in what he found when he looked into some budget figures.
Let’s talk about non-defense discretionary spending. This is spending that congress has to appropriate and approve every single year. During the federal budgets of Clinton’s first term this spending category rose by 2.8% a year. During the budgets of Clinton’s second term this spending rose by 6% a year. Remember, folks. This was that era when Clinton was vetoing budgets and shutting down government operations just to get more spending on his various domestic vote-buying programs.
OK --- so we have a difference of 3.2% in discretionary spending from Clinton’s first term to the second. How much money are we talking about? Well, it totals up to $117 billion dollars.
So --- hear this. If Clinton and the Democrats had managed to hold down their spending splurge the surplus at the beginning of this year would have been $117 more than it is. That would have been enough to cover the first two years of the Republican tax cut.
The problem isn’t cutting taxes. The problem is raising spending. For instance:
$200,000 to study international asparagus competitiveness
$5,000,000 for the National Sheep Industry Improvement Center
$3,000,000 to study reverse commuting in Oklahoma
Yeah --- that tax cut was certainly not needed. Right?
