Hardball: Bruce Bartlett desroys every Republican fiscal talking point in 5 minutes.

[Playinghardball]

SAource: Daily Kos

Bruce Bartlett was on Hardball today. If you missed his appearance it was simply amazing.

He destroyed every Republican fiscal talking point in 5 minutes.

Transcript.
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CM: Bruce Bartlett is former Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary under the first George Bush and a policy adviser to Ronald Reagan. Bottom line, let's look at the numbers right now. We've got a chart coming up. This shows the Bush tax cuts were responsible for increasing the debts. Now, we have about a $14 trillion debt right now, half came out since the turn of the century, and more than 40% of that has been from tax cuts.

BB: That's right. When Bush took office, we had a debt of about $6 trillion. The projections from the CBO were that we were going to run a $6 trillion surplus. By this point, if we had done nothing, we would have paid off the dead debt, but we added about $3 trillion of tax cuts. We lost about $3 trillion of revenue because of the slower economy and added about $6 trillion of spending, largely due to two unfinished wars and a Medicare drug benefits and a lot of other things. So, instead of getting -- paying off the debt--we ended up with about a $14 trillion debt.

CM: Some of these clowns, not all of them, running around saying Barack Obama is a Socialist, he drove up the national debt to $14 trillion and dance around in a circle and congratulate each other. That's not true.

BB: No, i think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative. If I were a liberal democrat, I probably would be upset.

More at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/28/999759/-Hardball:-Bruce-Bartlett-desroys-every-Republican-fiscal-talking-point-in-5-minutes-?via=sidebyuserrec

[Lebam in LA]

1. BB: No, i think the dirty secret is that Obama is a moderate conservative.

If I were a liberal democrat, I probably would be upset.

I am!!!

[Tennessee Gal]

2. This part is great!

BB: That's right. The Republicans keep saying the tax cuts are the key to prosperity. The 2000s are evidence that that is not true. We had booming economies in the 1980s and '90s. If we went back to those taxes, we would be better off.

CM: What is the argument against the kind of tax policy-- let's just say it again. It seems like a heck of a great economy with the tax rate of about 39.6, as opposed to 35?

BB: Right.

CM: That's the ones the rich bitch about, to use a crude term. That helped balance the budget.

BB: That's right. Don't forget that Ronald Reagan raised the capital gains rate, and now it's only 15%, and of course the wealthier you are, the more of your income comes from capital gains.

CM: We showed the 400 richest people in the country. They pay about the same as a poor person pays, about 18%.

BB: That's right, of income taxes, that's right.

CM: Whereas the middle class, who think they are the majority of the country, they're paying a higher rate.

BB: That's right. I don't see think any question we would have positive economic effects if we went back to the tax rates.

[Stuart G]

3. k & r

[RC]

4. +1 & Kick

[Dawson Leery]

5. Obama is no liberal, that is definite.