President Bush’s State of the Economy Report

A few of the lowlights from the State of the Economy Report:

When people across the world look at America’s economy what they see is low inflation, low unemployment, and the fastest growth of any major industrialized nation. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the United States. There is one undisputed leader in the world in terms of economy, and that’s the United States of America … Our economic leadership also depends on sensible, pro-growth tax policies. To help bring our economy out of a recession and recover from September the 11th, we cut taxes on the American people. We cut taxes on everybody who pays income taxes. We doubled the child tax credit. We reduced the marriage penalty. We cut taxes on small businesses. And we cut taxes on dividends and capital gains. There’s a lot of political debate about these tax cuts. But here are some of the facts: Since we enacted major tax relief into law in 2003, our economy has created nearly 7.2 million new jobs. Our economy has expanded by more than 13 percent. That expansion is roughly the size of the entire Canadian economy. This economic growth has led to record tax revenues, which has helped us cut the deficit in half three years ahead of schedule. One fact should be clear when you look at the statistics: The fastest way to kill a recovery would be to raise taxes on the people who created it. Now is not the time for the federal government to be raising taxes on the American people. We must ensure that the money you send to Washington is spent wisely. Next Monday, I’m going to submit to Congress a budget that will eliminate the deficit by 2012. In order to do so, we need to set priorities in Washington. You can’t try to be all things to all people when it comes to spending your money if you want to keep taxes low, keep the economy growing, and balance the budget.

Pardon my interruption but President Bush has been “all things to all people” with his Spend&Spend and Borrow&Borrow fiscal policy. Now the President babbles on as to how he wants to cut spending and reduce trade barriers, but then I have to wonder- who was that fellow acting as President over the past six years? There was also a long discussion as to health care policy followed by his desire to spending more taxpayer money to develop sources of energy other than imported oil. Oh yea – back to the trade protectionist big spending we used to know as our President. Bush also says we should spend more funds on education and resource. You see – a “Big Government Conservative” never has to choose between spending more versus taxing less. After all – that promise to balance the budget. It’s all smoke and mirrors funded by the Social Security Trust Fund reserves.