Ten Years Of The Bush Tax Cuts...

From ThinkProgress:

10 years ago tomorrow, the first of the Bush tax cuts was enacted. That 2001 tax cut was followed up by a second tax cut in 2003, passed after Vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly asserted that “deficits don’t matter.” The tax cuts were sold as necessary economic stimulus that would boost job creation and a moribund economy. “Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities,” Bush said on April 16, 2001 as he was pushing for the passage of the first tax cut. Two years later he said, “These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans…By speeding up the income tax cuts, we will speed up economic recovery and the pace of job creation.”

<snip>

BLEW UP THE DEFICIT: During a 2001 address to Congress, Bush said, “At the end of those 10 years , we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.” However, thanks in large part to the Bush tax cuts, the debt ballooned under Bush, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion.In fact, “From 2001 through 2010, the cuts added $2.6 trillion to the public debt, nearly 50% of the total debt accrued during this period.” As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found, “the tax cuts account for $1.7 trillion in extra deficits in 2001 through 2008, and $3.7 trillion over the 2009-2019 period.” In addition, the extra debt-service costs caused by the Bush-era tax cuts,amounts “to more than $200 billion through 2008 and another $1.7 trillion over the 2009-2019 period — nearly $330 billion in 2019 alone.

<snip>

TODAY’S GOP DOUBLES-DOWN: Today’s Republicans have not learned from the disastrous tax policies of their predecessors. For starters, Republicans only agreed to last December’s tax deal because it extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans. Now, both the House Republican budget and the House Republican “jobs plan” released last week include further reductions in the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. In fact, the “jobs plan” document calls for tax cuts to “Increase American competitiveness to spur investment and create more American jobs.” “Just because we proposed it in the past doesn’t mean it was not a good idea,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) of the House Republican plan. “I think the package that we have represents a lot of traditional ideas and new ideas about how to let the private sector create jobs.” As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein noted, “You could read without knowing the past decade ever happened.” ...

More at:

http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/ten-years-of-the-bush-tax-cuts/