Bush Economics

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Rich Lowry points out to all those liberals who called Bush's economic plan in 2004 "crazy", that he was right…once again:

Who says you can’t cut taxes, increase spending, and reduce the federal budget deficit all at the same time? That’s what the Bush administration has managed to do. Two decades after then-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush characterized Ronald Reagan’s idea that tax cuts would spur revenue-generating economic growth as “voodoo economics,” the witch doctor is again at work.

When President Bush pledged in 2004 to cut the deficit in half by 2009, critics guffawed. The Boston Globe headlined a story, “Bush’s plan to halve federal deficit seen as unlikely; higher spending, lower taxes don’t mix, analysts say.” “Fanciful,” “laughable” and “all spin,” said the critics.

Well, it turns out that 2009 might be coming early this year. The 2004 deficit had been projected to hit $521 billion, or 4.5 percent of gross domestic product. Bush’s goal was to cut it to 2.25 percent of GDP by 2009—not exactly as stirring a national goal as putting a man on the moon, but one that was nonetheless pronounced unattainable. This year, the deficit could go as low as $300 billion, right around the 2009 goal of 2.5 percent of GDP.

The key to the reduction is revenue growth, which has been stoked by economic growth. Government revenues are up 12.9 percent in the first eight months of this year over the same eight-month period last year—without any tax increases. When individuals, investors, and corporations have more cash in a growing economy, they send more to the federal government in tax payments.

This, despite—or, more accurately, because of—a couple of rounds of Bush tax cuts that were supposed to have been fiscally ruinous. The Bush tax reductions played some role in the economic expansion and therefore are responsible, partly, for the increased revenues. This doesn’t mean that tax cuts “pay for themselves,” as their most fervent advocates say. But they certainly can offset some of their own cost.

But of course all those tax cuts were for the rich right?  Just to pay off those who got him elected right?

Silly Democrats are wrong once again. 

What did a famous Democrat once say in 1962?

"Budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders, but by slow economic growth and periodic recession…. in short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax-rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates."

– John F. Kennedy, speech to the Economic Club of New York. December 14, 1962.

You think we will EVER see another Democrat who believes that again?  Not on your life.  They are now the party of entitlements.

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