Bush misleads public about cause of deficit-w/o tax cuts deficit goes to 0

[papau]

Bush misleads public about cause of deficit- without tax cuts deficit goes to 0 in 10 years.


On the same day the White House unveiled its 2005 budget, President Bush calculatingly obscured the reason the nation now faces a record $500 billion deficit. He said, "The reason we are where we are, in terms of the deficit, is because we went through a recession, we were attacked, and we're fighting a war."

But according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the single biggest cause of the deficit is the president's massive tax cuts for the wealthy -- which he conveniently did not mention. Specifically, 36% of the deficit comes from the tax cuts, while only 31% comes from defense/war-related spending increases, and the rest comes from the economic slowdown. In fact the president actually acknowledged in last year's budget that the deficit is primarily his fault. Table S-3 of Bush's 2004 budget "shows unambiguously that the administration's fiscal 2004 budget proposes a massive annual increase in the deficit" and that without those proposals the nation would return to surplus. In other words, the president is falsely
invoking national security, the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the war in Iraq to hide the fact that his tax cuts for the wealthy have created the largest deficit in American history.

With 88% of Americans now believing that the deficit is a "very serious" or "somewhat serious problem," the president has also tried to blame government spending for the deficit. But again, as the CBO notes, spending is at "a lower level than in any year from 1975 through 1996." And as the president starves veterans health care, low-income housing, and health care programs of funding, he is pushing more than $1 trillion in new tax cuts, primarily for the wealthy.

http://daily.misleader.org/ctt.asp?u=1338421&l=16604

[fleetus]

1. Interesting Post

The clickable sources at the bottom of the linked article are also very interesting.