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Bruce Bartlett blogs:
I see that former Senator Alan Simpson, co-chair of the deficit reduction commission, is angry with anti-tax fanatics for saying that he supported tax increases while in the Senate. Without checking his voting record, I think it’s reasonable to assume that Simpson, like almost all Republicans in the Senate in the 1980s, probably voted for the many tax increases supported and signed into law by Ronald Reagan, which eventually took back half of the 1981 tax cut (see below).
It may come as a surprise to some people that once upon a time in the not-too-distant past Republicans actually cared enough about budget deficits that they thought raising taxes was necessary to bring them down. Today, Republicans believe that deficits are nothing more than something to ignore when they are in power and to bludgeon Democrats with when they are out of power.
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I believe Rs have intentionally turned the budget into a political game, cutting taxes just so they can then point to Dems as “tax and spenders” whenever they try to tame it or any other problem. Which is about as cynical as you can get, imo.
But the question is, why would Cheney ever say, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” when he obviously thought they did.
Logansport, Indiana, Wednesday, February 20, 1985
Some facts: Before Reagan was elected president in 1980, the federal government’s budget had never exceeded $580 billion.
Since he has been in office that budget has never been less than $600 billion.
During every year of Reagan’s leadership, the budget has grown substantially.
When he leaves office in early 1989, annual federal expenditures will exceed $1.1 trillion.
When Reagan moved into the White House, the government was spending an average of $1.8 billion every day of the year, including weekends and holidays.
When he moves out, those average daily outlays will be $3.1 billion.
When Reagan took office, the national debt — the accumulated total of more than 200 years of relatively manageable annual deficits — was just under $1 trillion. When he leaves office, the national debt will total $2.6 trillion.
Next year, the debt will pass the $2 trillion mark, giving Reagan the dubious distinction of having accomplished in only five years what all previous presidents required two centuries to achieve adding $1 trillion to federal government’s outstanding debt.
The president prefers to blame Congress, especially the Democratic-controlled House, for profligate spending, fiscal irresponsibility and escalating annual deficits.
But every year, he has an opportunity to fashion a budget and present it to Congress before any legislator has an opportunity to meddle in the process — and he has consistently failed to come
even close to a balanced budget.
In each of the past three years, he has proposed that the federal government disburse at least $180 billion more than it receives — but In this year’s State of the Union address he reiterated his
appeal for an “amendment mandating that the federal government spend no more than it takes in.”
In that speech, the president boasted that “pushing down tax rates has freed our economy to vault to record growth” — but he neglected to mention the adverse impact of those lower revenues on the size of the deficit.
Indeed, Reagan conveniently ignored the deficit in his address, although virtually all members of
Congress — Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals — acknowledge it is the central issue they must confront in attempting to convert the president’s proposals into a responsible budget.
The president also never mentions the cost of servicing the national debt.
Finally, there’s the bizarre idea that economic growth will resolve all of the problems associated
with the government’s structural debt. This quaint notion is embraced only by a dwindling
band of “supply side” fanatics and not supported by any of the White House’s economic projections.
Marysville. Ohio
Wednesday, August 11, 1982
President Reagan, defending an embattled 198.9 billion tax increase bill, said today the measure pending in Congress would have very little effect on the taxes of most Americans.
In his first major speech on the bill, Reagan argued the legislation was essential to his economic recovery program. If Congress refuses to pass the bill, the nation faces bigger budget deficits, higher interest rates and growing unemployment, he said.
Despite the bill’s provisions to Increase taxes on cigarettes, telephone services and airline tickets, Reagan insisted, “It will have very little effect on the majority of individual taxpayers.”
Reagan has been waging a lobbying blitz from the White House to recruit reluctant Republicans to back an election-year tax hike.
His speeches today marked a new stage in the administration’s campaign for the bill, and there were indications Reagan would ask for network time soon to address the nation on the subject.
In his speech, Reagan said, “For a conservative president like me to have to put his arms around a multi-billion dollar deficit… well, it’s like holding your nose and embracing a pig.
And believe me, that budget deficit is as slippery as a greased pig.”
He said the tax hike is not the largest tax increase in history, as is claimed by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee.
According to administration estimates, the deficit would be close to (165 billion if the tax bill is not passed. If it is passed, the deficit in fiscal year 1983 is expected to be $115 billion, according to the administration, and |150 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
jb bennet,
You can actually go to the conservative CATO institute and look at their 80s work. They completely critize Reagan for being nothing but a big spender.
Sure the 80s had some growth for a few years, but the only reason there was growth in the 80s was not from the tax cuts, which were eventually mostly reversed, but because Reagan put his foot down on the peddle of spending.
Conservatives like to re-write the history of Reagan, but he really was just a tax and spend and deficit guy.
“Through most of his presidency, Reagan did not rate much higher than other post-World War II presidents. And during his first two years, Reagan’s approval ratings were quite low. His 52 percent average approval rating for his presidency places him sixth out of the past ten presidents, behind Kennedy (70 percent), Eisenhower (66 percent), George H.W. Bush (61 percent), Clinton (55 percent), and Johnson (55 percent). His popularity frequently dipped below 50 percent during his first term, plummeted to 46 percent during the Iran-Contra scandal, and never exceeded 68 percent. (By contrast, Clinton’s maximum approval rating hit 71 percent.)”
armstp
I have a http://newspaperarchive.com/ account, it beats the Cato. I can easily look things up from before the American Revolution to the 21st century.
Here is another clip with yet another Republican president saying a tax hike is important to lower deficits.
The problem is they just kept borrowing so the revenue fix/tax hike was practically useless . Look at the Bush cuts, he buried us in debt.
Wednesday, August 11, 1982
Former President Gerald R. Ford said he supports “a tax increase of responsible proportion” aimed at cutting federal borrowing. Ford said the key to turning around the economy is for Congress to narrow the huge deficits projected for this year and next.
He believes a House-Senate conference committee will emerge with a bill similar to the $98.9 billion tax hike measure proposed by Reagan.
“I believe that in the final analysis, there are enough people in.the Congress — Republicans and Democrats — who understand that if you don’t pass it … you could have, financial chaos in this country’,” Ford said.
“I happen to think that is not going to happen because we’ve got enough responsible people in the Congress who will pass the tax bill.”
jg bennet,
The reality is the Republicans have by far the worst fiscal track record. If you look at the ratio Debt/GDP (the really only important number to look at) it went up for every single Republican president since Eisenhower and went down under every single Democratic president during the same period. Obama may be the only Demcratic president to break the fiscal discipline record of the Democrats and the only reason Debt/GDP will go up under Obama is because of the $1.3 trillion deficit and the biggest recession since the Great Depression that was handed to him by Bush as a parting gift.
The single worst fiscal presidents in modern times were the two Bushes and Reagan.
If you are a fiscal conservative the party you should be voting for is the Democrats, as they have a much better track record than the Republicans. Also, if you look at the numbers GDP growth and the stock market also always do better under Democratic presidents. Those are the facts.
I’m voting straight Democrat this time, I can’t vote for a Republican, I’m disgusted with them…
_______________________________
Tract on Monetary Reform
_______________________________
Credit is Like Nostalgia:
It can lead to procrastination and prevent us to go forward!
_______________________________
Our economy is slowly dying, your job, lifestyle are dominated by anxiety.
The economy is kept alive artificially.
No one is proposing a solution because no one has the slightest idea of why it is happening and many have vested interest in the present system.
However an objective observation of the phenomenon can help us understand it and provide us with an innovative solution.
Of course we can’t solve the problem with the tools that brought us there in the first place and we need a new ideology.
_______________________________
- Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?
- Well, remember that what an ideology is, is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to — to exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not. And what I’m saying to you is, yes, I found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is, but I’ve been very distressed by that fact.
- You found a flaw in the reality…(!!!???)
- Flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.
- In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working?
- That is — precisely. No, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I had been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.
_______________________________
In order to alleviate those economic woes wee need to create, as fast as possible, a new credit free currency that will solve the credit crunch and bring incremental jobs, consumption and investments to the present system.
An Innovative Credit Free, Free Market, Post Crash Economy
Tract on Monetary Reform
It is urgent if we want to limit social, political and military chaos.
_______________________________
Is the fulfilment of these ideas a visionary hope? Have they insufficient roots in the motives which govern the evolution of political society? Are the interests which they will thwart stronger and more obvious than those which they will serve?
I do not attempt an answer in this place. It would need a volume of a different character from this one to indicate even in outline the practical measures in which they might be gradually clothed. But if the ideas are correct — an hypothesis on which the author himself must necessarily base what he writes — it would be a mistake, I predict, to dispute their potency over a period of time. At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible.
But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.
Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.
_______________________________
Credit Free Economy
More Jobs, No Debt, No Fear.
Prosperous, Fair and Stable.
_______________________________
I’ve often wondered if tax breaks are supposed to be eventually generate revenue by growing the economy, then what happened with the Bush tax cuts? Where was the growth promised?
Is it a matter of not enough years were given to allow the tax breaks to grow the economy (and thus grow government revenue) or, as I suspect, it’s all a great big scam by the GOP?
forkboy1965,
What is more astonding is not only did Bush push through one of the biggest tax cuts ever, but he also did record spending to blow up the deficit and debt and all that spending across the defense industry and yet very little growh and zero job growth to show for it in the last 10 years. How does that happen?