On Wednesday President Obama made it clear that he will not compromise on an extension of the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. The compromises and obstruction over this past year have made it also abundantly clear that what the right opposes has nothing to do with logic, certainly not when it comes to taxes and spending.
The trickle down effect didn’t work previously and it won’t work now. Still, Republicans will damn the President for spending money, yet they also want to extend tax cuts to the wealthy. It’s fact time.
“If Democrats lose the upcoming election it won’t be because the country’s economy hasn’t recovered — it’ll be because they didn’t remind the American public that it was the Bush administration that put us there. The Democratic National Committee needs to be more aggressive with its messaging and instead of shying away from “pointing fingers,” it should be stating facts.
Fact: The federal government had a budget surplus under the Clinton administration.
Fact: When George W. Bush left office, the budget had a deficit of over $400 billion.
Fact: The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy combined with the recession are the reasons why the deficit has reached over $1.5 trillion roday. (Brookings Institute)
Fact: In the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration insisted that the total cost of the war would be $100 to $200 billion of taxpayer money. So far, over $1 trillion have been spent and the total tab will be $3 trillion by the time the war is over — if it’s ever, over. (CostofWar.com and Washington Post).
Fact: Under the Bush administration the country shed jobs. When Bush took office, the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent, when he left it rose to 5.8 percent. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The Bush defense is usually: ”When are you going to stop blaming Bush?” It’s more pertinent for us to ask, when they going to stop blaming President Obama for the grievous mistakes of the previous administration?
The tax cuts, which were supposed to last for only ten years, had their genesis in the 2000 presidential campaign, when both Mr Bush and Al Gore, the Democratic candidate, proposed to return a portion of the then budget surplus to voters. As the economy tipped into recession in 2001, stimulus became the rationale for the cuts, and for the 2003 law that phased them in more rapidly than originally planned. By then, reduced tax revenues were contributing to a steady increase in the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the cost of the cuts over the ten years to 2011 at $1.7 trillion.
NYT:
“This is about long-term economic growth,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said on Tuesday. “This isn’t about the next 60 days or the next 90 days. This is about how do we get our economy fully back on track, how do we get the millions that want to work back to work, and how do we repair the economic damage that’s been going on not just over the past two years but over the past 10 years.”
Under the feckless reign of George Bush, the US has fallen deeper and deeper into debt. We fight expensive wars, subsidize Exxon, and spend vastly more every year than we take in. We pay for our profligacy by borrowing money from the Chinese instead of taxing the rich. John McCain, George Bush, and all their well-connected friends pay less than their fair share, despite the enhanced opportunities they enjoy.
The United States government cannot continue down that path.
Voting for politicians that have and are obstructing anything and everything this administration has tried to do in the interest of the American people happens through disinformation. The disinformation was brought to you by Fox News.
Is it any wonder that corporations and the wealthy are more important than the majority of Americans when a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week propagandist news station twists the facts and also the rights set forth by The Constitution?
No more Bush-era tax cuts are in sight for the wealthy. This happened on Obama’s watch.
Vote Obama/Biden 2012
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*Image courtesy of Glass Onion
*The graph was hijacked from Robert Silvey at Rubicon
