Bush Budget Director Bolten: "No intention of backing down on tax cuts"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, the third-ranking House Republican, said Congress should consider a "stimulus" measure "to be sure that we see the economy move forward as it needs to, rather than it might in response to this disaster." Such legislation usually includes tax cuts and increases in unemployment benefits. "This raises a whole set of new questions about the state of our infrastructure and the state of our emergency preparedness around the country, so this is likely to trigger a whole new set of fiscal demands. The first casualty may be the idea of making tax cuts permanent," said William A. Galston, a former Clinton White House aide who heads the University of Maryland's public policy school.

Joshua B. Bolten, Bush's budget director, has said the president has no intention of backing down on his tax-cutting plans in response to the hurricane, despite the new costs. "Right now we see ourselves on a continuing declining path in the deficit out over the next several years," Bolten said. "This kind of spending adds a challenge to us in meeting those goals, but I don't think it's a long-term challenge." The new spending "will be a concern in the next year or two, and not long run for the economy - certainly not if we handle the recovery properly," Bolten said.

Perhaps the most lasting challenge Bush faces, some analysts said, is in regaining his footing amid a crisis that has raised questions about his leadership. "Bush had so many times in his first term when he was somehow leading, and showing people he was doing it," said John C. Fortier, a specialist on the presidency at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Bush could put his stamp on this crisis as the strong leader, but he hasn't done that yet." Bush's response to Katrina has called into question a central element of his presidential persona, said John Robert Greene, a Cazenovia College history professor. "I call it the 'chief soother' - the power of the president to make us feel comfortable in times of crisis," Greene said. "This president is falling short as chief soother."

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=22614&mode=nested&order=0

[Joebert]

1. Obviously

Ram the country into the toilet.

Add deficits of historic proportions.

Ruin civil rights.

If they can control the vote, everything continues.

If they can't, they're tossed out, and their replacement raises taxes to fix the deficit.

Then they run in the next election on the platform that the damn dirty Democrat raised their taxes.


Rinse.
Repeat.

[okieinpain]

2. funny, so bush is going to ask for more tax cuts, then to balance the

budget he's going to cut more out of LA., hurricane preparedness budget.

man, can it get any funnier.

[OregonBlue]

3. I hope they do try to pass tax cuts

so that the American people will finally see what their priorities are!

[applegrove]

4. Because it is more important than ever that those toddlers who

were locked into the convention centre pay for what they have done... and pay for their rescue ... which is what happens as the rich in the U.S.A. sacrifice NOTHING.

More debt. More bathtub. More tax on the generation just born.

Personal responsibility? My ass.

I cannot wait for the world to start suing Oil companies for Global Warming. I simply cannot wait. And if you are in say - Ghana - and facing storms and the like..don't you get to take over corporate assets when they don't let them take you to court?

[AJH032]

5. this administration is a joke

Bolten sees the deficits declining over the next several years? Where do Republicans get the idea that lower taxes will somehow magically yield higher revenue to pay for their uncontrollable foreign policy spending? It's like how last year Bush promised to cut his deficit in half by 2009. Lies, lies, lies. It's amazing how facts and evidence can show something so plain and simple, yet the administration insists the opposite (on the budget, economy, global warming, etc).

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

6. They don't plan to lower taxes, they plan to give tax cuts...

...and this is how they plan to pay for them:

"You know, I'm not exactly sure how big the national sales tax is going to have to be, but it's the kind of interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously," Bush said, according to a Reuters report.

August 09, 2004, 8:47 a.m.

A National Sales Tax No Vote: The rates would be vastly higher than what you might suspect.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert created a flurry of excitement in Republican circles the other day when it was reported that he is proposing the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service in his new book. This would be accomplished by eliminating all existing federal taxes and replacing them with a national retail sales tax. There is no indication of what tax rate Speaker Hastert thinks would be necessary to replace all federal revenue. A current proposal by Rep. John Linder (R., Ga.) says that a 23 percent rate would be adequate. But such a low rate can only be sustained by making completely absurd assumptions about what would be taxed. Every serious economist who has ever looked at this question has concluded that a vastly higher rate would in fact be needed.

An unstated assumption is that the 23 percent rate proposed by Linder is comparable to existing state and local sales taxes, where the tax comes on top of the purchase price. Thus, a 5 percent sales tax on a $1 purchase comes to $1.05. But that’s not the way the Linder plan works. He deceptively calculates the rate as if the tax is part of the purchase price. He calls this the tax-inclusive rate. Calculating the rate the normal way people are accustomed to with state and local sales taxes would require a 30 percent tax rate, not 23 percent. When Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation scored the Linder proposal four years ago it estimated that it would actually require a tax-inclusive rate of 36 percent, not 23 percent, to equal current federal revenues. Calculating the rate in a normal, tax-exclusive manner would mean a 57 percent rate.

Economist Bill Gale of the Brookings Institution notes that supporters of the sales tax assume that there will be no tax evasion under their proposal and that the size of government will not grow, even though they would send a large annual check to every American in order to offset the regressivity of the tax. Making realistic assumptions, Gale estimates that the tax-inclusive rate, comparable to Linder’s proposed 23 percent rate, would actually have to be about 50 percent. A rate comparable to existing sales taxes would be close to 100 percent. And let us not forget that state and local sales taxes would come on top of the federal sales tax, pushing the total rate even higher. Obviously, the federal government is not going to impose tax rates this high, nor would anyone pay them if it did. There would be a massive tax revolt.

[Cha]

7. Having bush as the chief Farce

has been Disturbing the Hell out of at least half of the Country.

I don't buy that bit about bush getting more votes on diebold machines without a paper trail..prove it!

[liberaliraqvet26]

8. Political Suicide....

This will be what brings down teflon george

[Totally Committed]

9. These people are effing monsters...

They are still trying to figure out how to keep giving tax cuts to the rich, even though the porr are in so much need. I can't fathom their thought processes, or their lack of morality.

Katrina and Republican Tax Cuts

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The unexpected and soaring costs of Hurricane Katrina have called into question the U.S. Republicans` plans to introduce tax cuts for the wealthy.

While House Majority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri said he has every intention of pushing forward with the tax and spending cuts and Social Security legislation later this month. He said hurricane-related legislation will not be controversial and 'may mean we work on a Friday or two,' The Washington Post reported.

But Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., is questioning his party`s priorities just days after nearly $11 billion was rushed through in relief spending. 'How do you do tax cuts when your budget is straining to save lives?' Foley said.

Marshall Wittmann, a former Republican political strategist now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, told the newspaper the Republican agenda now looks like 'political suicide' in the light of the hurricane`s disastrous and lethal aftermath.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1045902.php/Katrina_disrupts_Republican_tax_plans

Ugh.

TC