The Forgotten Detail: The Bush Tax Policy was a Failure

[ProSense]

THE FORGOTTEN DETAIL: THE BUSH TAX POLICY WAS A FAILURE....

President Obama wants to extend lower tax rates for the middle class, while allowing the top rate for the wealthy to expire on schedule. Republicans want to make current rates permanent, adding $4 trillion to the debt over the next decade, and is prepared to kill middle-class breaks unless they get what they want. The public is siding with Obama; a few too many cowardly congressional Democrats are siding with Republicans.

A detail that's doesn't get as much attention as it deserves is that the policy everyone's fighting over -- the one the GOP will do anything to protect -- didn't work. Bush's tax policy was a failure, and didn't deliver on any of its intended goals. Bruce Bartlett offers a timely reminder.

Republicans are heavily invested in permanently extending the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration, all of which expire at the end of this year exactly as the legislation was written in the first place. To hear Republicans, one would think that the Bush tax cuts were the most powerful stimulus to growth ever enacted and only a madman would even think of allowing any of them to expire.

The truth is that there is virtually no evidence in support of the Bush tax cuts as an economic elixir. To the extent that they had any positive effect on growth, it was very, very modest. Their main effect was simply to reduce the government's revenue, thereby increasing the budget deficit, which all Republicans claim to abhor.

It'd be one thing if the Bush tax policy were a sterling success. Republicans could at least go into this debate arguing, "Look how effective these rates have been! Changing course now would be crazy!"

But the policy the GOP and some terribly foolish Democrats want desperately to keep didn't work. The lower rates didn't create jobs; they didn't generate the predicted boom; they didn't keep a balanced budget; they didn't meet any of the nation's pressing needs.

<...>

That they failed doesn't matter. That they won't improve the economy now doesn't matter, either. The GOP knows what it wants, and merit, evidence, and reason are hopelessly irrevelant.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Not forgotten at all.

Center of the debate.

:shrug:

[Kdillard]

2. K and R. Absolutely correct

[babylonsister]

3. Forgotten by a lot of Dems, too, sadly. nt

[damntexdem]

4. Oh, it wasn't a failure at all. It met its true goals: the shift of wealth toward the most wealthy

And that's why the GOP supports its extension. That has nothing to do with the economy and everything to do with lining the pockets if the Repukes' wealthy masters.

[obxhead]

5. The problem is they did work.

The people that will vote on extending the tax cuts received a great benefit from them. Tons of extra money in their bank accounts.

The tax cuts were never for one minute actually supposed to do anything other than allow the extremely wealthy to keep more money.

[Cha]

6. KR

[unblock]

7. republicans: sticking to a failed ideology shows toughness, commitment, and values!