Tax Cuts Work?
That seems to be the message behind the shrinking deficit story that President Bush touted Wednesday. That still didn’t satisfy Democrats, though:
“Only a president with such a historically bad economic record would be this excited about a $248 billion deficit,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, (D-NY). “Under his watch…record surpluses turned into record deficits as far as the eye can see.”
Those record surpluses Ms. Maloney talked about were the result of Clinton not sufficiently investing in national security more than anything else. Ms. Maloney’s statement is intellectually dishonest on another level. She’s comparing a peacetime economy to an economy that’s beared the burdens of paying for major homeland security upgrades, two wars in the GWOT and overcome the economic consequences of the biggest terrorist attack in our nation’s history. Simply put, if President Bush hadn’t had to fight the terrorists, he’d be posting surpluses.
Now for the hard facts:
- Corporate income tax receipts grew from $278.3 billion to $353.9 billion, a 27% increase.
- Personal income tax receipts grew from $927.2 billion to $1.044 trillion, an increase of $116.8 billion.
- The deficit dropped from $318.7 billion to $247.7 billion, a drop of $71 billion or 22%
Kent Conrad, the ever-whining senator from North Dakota, still tried painting this as negative news:
Democrats said the narrowing of the deficit would be temporary as the pending retirement of 78 million baby boomers will send costs of the government’s big benefit programs soaring. “The fact that some are trumpeting this year’s deficit number as good news shows just how far we’ve fallen. Our budget picture is extremely serious by any measure,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.
Shame on Sen. Conrad for talking about the troubles we face when baby boomers retire. His was the party that said we didn’t have a problem. His was the party that opposed any changes in Social Security. His was the party that ignored former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan’s advice to utilize private account growth rates to compensate for the predicted shortfall. His words ring rather hollow in light of those facts.
That’s the epitome of a do-nothing congressional caucus.
Technorati Tags: President Bush, Budget Deficits, Treasury Department, Social Security, Democrats
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
October 12th, 2006 at 1:34 am
[...] Cross-posted at California Conservative Categories: Midterm Elections, National Security, President Bush, Economy, Taxes, Democrats | [...]
October 15th, 2006 at 4:46 pm
The deficit would also be just a wee bit smaller if there was a majority of Republicans, not Republicrats, in both houses of Congress, and they had the cajones to cut spending on programs not the pervue of the government (and 1500 “pork” projects.)
Or if we had a Prez who knew how to spell his name and put it on the “veto” line of any spending bill.