Quotes and taxes
by cactus
What with the new CBP Report showing the growing deficit (warning: PDF file!!!), I thought I’d update a post I wrote a few months ago. Here’s the post in its entirety:
Here’s a short collection of White House quotes on taxes and the budget – one for each year of the Bush Administration.
2001. From the President’s Blueprint, Feb 28, 2001:
The President’s plan will accelerate this trend to record rates by retiring an historic $2 trillion in debt over the next 10 years. Under the President’s budget, the national debt will be only seven percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011, its lowest share in more than 80 years.
2002. From a White House Economic Fact sheet, June 7, 2002:
The War and Recession — Not the Tax Cuts — Drained the Budget Surplus
2003. White House Fact Sheet, Feb 2003″
The budget would be in double digit deficit if had there never been a tax cut in 2001.
2004.GW’s SOTU, Jan 20, 2004:
By doing so, we can cut the deficit in half over the next five years.
2005. White House Fact Sheet, Oct 11, 2005
Today, President Bush Announced That The Deficit Has Been Cut In Half 3 Years Ahead Of His 2009 Goal And That The FY2006 Budget Deficit Was $248 Billion.
2006. GW Bush, Oct 11, 2006
Tax relief fuels economic growth, and growth — when the economy grows, more tax revenues come to Washington. And that’s what’s happened. It makes sense, doesn’t it? As businesses expand people pay more taxes, and when you pay more taxes, there’s more revenues that come to our treasury.
2007. White House Fact Sheet, July 7, 2009
Following The Path Of President Bush’s FY 2008 Budget Would Lead To A Budget Surplus In 2012 Of $33 Billion. President Bush’s FY 2008 Budget lays out a detailed plan to balance the budget in the next five years while keeping taxes low. It keeps annual spending under control and addresses our long-term budgetary challenge – the unsustainable growth in entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
2008. See 3.
2009. GW, in an interview with a Fox News anchor:
Raising taxes is a very irresponsible move by the President. It’s going to raise the deficit.
Hmmm…. come to think of it, there isn’t much to update. I guess we’ll get an excuse or seventeen I could pop in for 2008, but frankly, its not that much fun any more. It was pathetic when the administration and its defenders were crowing back in 2005 and 2006 that somehow the president had succeeded because he had managed to mitigate a small part of the damage he had caused (i.e., there was a reduction in the deficit that he had created), and now its just sad. Even most of the folks who were along for the ride at that time are probably willing to concede things aren’t going that well, but you can bet it won’t stop any of them from voting for the dude who promises to continue the very policies that got us here.
(And a special message to the trolls – if you think its somehow a coincidence that every single Democratic administration since World War 2 ended managed to cut the debt held by the public as a percentage of GDP, and that every single Republican administration beginning with Ford raised it, (data here) honestly, there isn’t enough common ground for us to have a discussion. I will simply note that policies have consequences, and if you purposely support policies knowing damn well that they will probably make us all worse off, well, that says something about you.)
—————————-
by cactus