Watch your pockets and warn your friends!

[carpro]

http://us.f356.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?Idx=0&Search=&YY=67512&order=down&sort=date&pos=0

Newt Gingrich

Watch your pocket and warn your friends: The tax-increase gang is gathering momentum.

For the last five years, President Bush and the congressional Republicans have generally been terrific in fighting for continuing tax cuts and in rejecting any effort to raise taxes. These tax cuts have powered the entrepreneurial drive which has given us the fastest growth rate of any industrialized country (5.3% last quarter).

However, the left rejects all the evidence that tax cuts are working. They are desperate for more money for the federal government to pay for more bureaucracy, take care of more public-employee union members (now by far the largest part of the union movement) and increase dependency on the bureaucracy.

But the left knows it cannot openly support a tax increase. So instead the left will attempt to steal conservative language and talk about "balancing the budget." But be warned: It's a step-by-step conspiracy to raise your taxes. Here's how it works:

Step One: To "balance the budget," the liberal left will explain that everything has to "be on the table" -- by which they mean tax increases.

Step Two: Then they will explain that serious transformation of entitlements such as personal Social Security savings accounts or health savings accounts for Medicare are impossible and therefore off the table.

Step Three: Then they will explain that there is a bipartisan pork coalition among incumbents who will make it impossible to control spending.

Step Four: Finally, balancing the budget will be defined as a big tax increase and everyone who is against the big tax increase will be attacked as fiscally irresponsible.

We have been here before, and we have seen this dance done again and again. The only way to stop it is to not let it get started. No conservative should agree to a bipartisan effort to balance the budget if it includes tax increases, because in the end, that is all we will get.

The time to draw the line is now.

 

[The Galatian]

Playing us for suckers

Who do you think is going to pay for the record deficits Bush is running up?

Do you think the deficit fairy is going to take care of it?

A deficit is a tax increase with interest and penalties. Unless you think the US is going to renege on paying it off. This is why governments love deficit spending. They can go hog wild, and remind the gullible that "we haven't raised taxes."

 

[Revmitchell]

The federal government gets more revenue when taxes are lower. The deficite continues to grow only because the spending continues to increase. Stop the spending completely and pay the bills. The budget gets balanced the fastest and taxes do not get increased.

But communism thrives on taxes. Take from the wealthy who earned their money by...you know working, and give it to those who...sat home.

The Clintons, Kennedys and etc. do not care about the budget, they only care about taking your hard earned money and redistributing it. Because they have a right to it and you dont. It is immoral for you to earn, spend, save and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Unless of course you are one of them.

And before anyone taks about a balanced budget during the Clinton administration, that was a result of the take over of the congress by the republicans in 1994. Clinton didnt sign his own balanced budget bill he signeed the republican created bill.

 

[The Galatian]

The federal government gets more revenue when taxes are lower.

Taxes are lower now. Revenue is not meeting expenses.

The deficite continues to grow only because the spending continues to increase.

Yeah, that's like saying "He's very good at managing his money, except he spends more than he earns."

Stop the spending completely and pay the bills.

Can't do it, can we? But we could stop throwing money down ratholes as Bush has done. He got his seniors drug bill, and he made sure it had a provision forbidding the government from buying in bulk to get a discount.

That's just one of many, many extravagant gifts his contributors got. But he did try to cut back a little. He tried to trim back the combat separation pay our troops get for fighting overseas. And he was charging wounded veterans for meals they got while hospitalized. It's not much, but he's trying.

But communism thrives on taxes.

Reagan raised my taxes as a small business owner. I had no idea he was still a communist.

The Clintons, Kennedys and etc. do not care about the budget,

Actually, Clinton got got the deficit down to nothing, and actually went in the black his last year in office.

And before anyone taks about a balanced budget during the Clinton administration, that was a result of the take over of the congress by the republicans in 1994. Clinton didnt sign his own balanced budget bill he signeed the republican created bill.

Horsepucky. I remember that mess. The Republicans in Congress said that they'd shut down the goverment if Clinton didn't do it their way. He was firm, and after a bit, the Republcans caved and gave him the balanced budget he told them to give him.

From 1999:

In 1995, Clinton and the Republicans refused to compromise on appropriations, the government ground to a halt, and voters blamed the GOP. Last year, facing another impasse, the Republicans caved and accepted additional spending demanded by Clinton. This year, DeLay has decided to engineer the showdown so that the GOP will have the upper hand and Clinton will take the blame. The plan is magnificently self-defeating. The party that will lose the showdown is the party that is perceived to have engineered it. And DeLay has just handed Clinton all the evidence he needs.
http://www.slate.com/id/33165/

Clinton's program worked, because increasing taxes and cutting expenses served to reduce government borrowing, which had the federal government competing with businesses for money. Reduced deficits made money easier to get, more startups, more jobs, more tax revenue.

In fact, Clinton later admitted that he would have raised taxes less than he did, so well did the program work. Bush is doing it exactly backwards. You can't spend yourself rich.

 

[Hope of Glory]

Quote:
The federal government gets more revenue when taxes are lower.

Taxes are lower now. Revenue is not meeting expenses.

"More revenue" is not the same as "meeting expenses".

If my spending is double my income, so I get a job that increases my income by 25%, I'm still not meeting my expenses, even though revenue is higher.

When Reagan slashed the tax rate, tax revenue skyrocketed, but the spending skyrocketed even faster.

If you raise taxes now, revenue will fall, and the defecit will only increase faster.

The way to stop defecit spending is to quit spending so much. Cut out the illegal programs, and limit spending to those programs that are legal.

Oh, and the smoke and mirrors that Clinton used to "balance" the budget (pass it along to his successor) was denigrated even by a liberal extremist acquaintance of mine who was a professor of economics ad U of MD.

There has not been an honestly balanced budget since the 50's.

 

[The Galatian]

The federal government gets more revenue when taxes are lower.

Barbarian observes:
Taxes are lower now. Revenue is not meeting expenses.

"More revenue" is not the same as "meeting expenses".

For Bush, it is. If he can't find a way to increase revenue, he will not meet expenses.

When Reagan slashed the tax rate, tax revenue skyrocketed,

Hmmm.... From the Statistical Abstract of the United States...

http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1988-03.pdf

Take a look. Reagan tried the Keynsian approach; cut taxes, and jack up expenditures, and the economy will revive. And it did. The problem was that Reagan didn't get to the part where Keynes said that it could only be a temporary policy. So, eventually, the deficit shot up even higher than the economy, and it began to decline. Clinton's tax increases corrected that skid.

The way to stop defecit spending is to quit spending so much.

Yep. But as long as you have this gang of fools in office, it isn't going to happen.

Oh, and the smoke and mirrors that Clinton used to "balance" the budget (pass it along to his successor) was denigrated even by a liberal extremist acquaintance of mine who was a professor of economics ad U of MD.

The GAO and CBO used the same system for Reagan and Bush and Clinton. Apples with apples. However, it's true that all of them used the same accounting tricks to make it look better than it was. Clinton's was just better than the others, not great.

 

[Hope of Glory]

Clinton replaced long-term loans with short-term loans for a temporary lower rate that was jacked up when the loans were renewed...

I don't recall Reagan doing that.

Oh, and you are still blind to seeing the difference between "more revenue" and "meeting expenses".

What good will it do to lower revenue, as you suggest? How is that going to help the defecit?

 

[carpro]

It's been proven time and again that tax decreases increase government revenues and liberals still don't get it.

Amazing!

 

[The Galatian]

It's been proven time and again that tax decreases increase government revenues and liberals still don't get it.

A liberal (Keynes) first proposed it. It was the means by which Roosevelt engineered the recovery from the depression.

The point that Roosevelt understood (and Clinton understands) that Reagan and Bush cannot understand, is (read carefully now) you cannot do this as a long-term policy. That leads to economic collapse. It is what took down the Soviet Empire.

It can be used as a short-term fix, but once the recovery is underway, you have to ease the economy off of huge deficits. The part that no politicians wants to face is ( read carefully again) eventually someone will have to pay for the deficits.

But Bush and Reagan continued to claim they were giving us a free lunch. And people actually believed them.

Amazing!

Indeed.

 

[Hope of Glory]

Why is it that you cannot seem to differentiate between deficit spending and revenue inreases?

When revenue is increased, spending should be decreased.

Tax cuts increase revenue. Period.

If you don't decrease spending, then increased revenue won't make much of a difference in defecit spending.

 

[The Galatian]

Why is it that you cannot seem to differentiate between deficit spending and revenue inreases?

I just explained them to you. I don't know how to make it more simple.

When revenue is increased, spending should be decreased.

Spending should be decreased whenever possible.

Tax cuts increase revenue. Period.

No. It depends entirely on how much, and what the economy is doing at the time. Clinton raised taxes, and revenue increased.

If you don't decrease spending, then increased revenue won't make much of a difference in defecit spending.

Not much chance of that, until we get someone like Clinton back in the WH. The GOP position is that deficits take care of themselves. This is why Bush has given us record deficits.

 

[carpro]

Not much chance of that, until we get someone like Clinton back in the WH. The GOP position is that deficits take care of themselves. This is why Bush has given us record deficits.

Using Clinton as a budgetary icon is really a joke.

Largest tax increases in history coupled with an artificial dot com economy. He would have spent us into oblivion without a Republican congress to curb his desires.

The problem now is that that same Republican congress has forgotten to act like Republicans and the President is standing on the sidelines letting them.

The word "veto" must not be in Bushes vocabulary.

 

[Daisy]

http://us.f356.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?Idx=0&Search=&YY=67512&order=down&sort=date&pos=0

However, the left rejects all the evidence that tax cuts are working. They are desperate for more money for the federal government to pay for more bureaucracy, take care of more public-employee union members (now by far the largest part of the union movement) and increase dependency on the bureaucracy.

George H. W. Bush called it "voodoo economics". To his credit, he started the country back into the solvency which Clinton completed. Too bad George Junior squandered it all and drove us deeply into the current deficit.

The Keynesians have noticed that the apparent spurts following tax cuts even more closely follow increases in government spending. I'd like to see the graph on those three factors to judge what the real correlation is.

 

[carpro]

The graphs might be interesting, Daisy. But I don't need a graph to tell me that ,historically, tax cuts have increased government revenues.

I'd have to check to see if past Congresses have squandered that extra revenue,plus some, like this Congress has.

A tax increase will not slow down Congressional spending. It will only exacerbate the problem.

 

[The Galatian]

Using Clinton as a budgetary icon is really a joke.

Clinton got good reviews, even from conservatives. Especially from conservatives because he refused to make deficits a permanent policy. He reduced the non-military federal payroll to 1960s levels. And he actually reduced spending in real dollars.

Largest tax increases in history

According to George Bush's people, the largest peacetime tax increase (there was a bigger one in 1942) was Ronald Reagan's. According to the Tax Analysis Office of Bush's own Treasury department...

In the period since 1968, the study said, "the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 was the biggest increase." That was the tax increase signed by Ronald Reagan, rescinding some of the effects of his huge tax cut passed the year before.
That 1982 tax increase only slightly exceeded Clinton's in inflation-adjusted dollars ($37 billion a year vs.. $32 billion) but it was much bigger in relation to the size of the economy. The '82 increase amounted to 4.6% of GDP (average for the first two years) while Clinton's was 2.7%.
http://www.ustreas.gov/offices/tax-policy/library/ota81.pdf

Imagine that. Reagan the all-time tax increaser.

He would have spent us into oblivion without a Republican congress to curb his desires.

I remember the issue. The Republicans told him that he'd do it their way or they'd shut down the government. He called their bluff, the American people backed Clinton, the Republicans caved and did what he told them to do.

I can dig that up for you too, if youi'd like to see it again. Meantime, you need to start thinking for yourself. The facts are out there, if you have the stuff to go learn about them.

 

[Baptist in Richmond]

It's been proven time and again that tax decreases increase government revenues and liberals still don't get it.

Amazing!

Really?
When?

BiR

 

[carpro]

Imagine that. Reagan the all-time tax increaser.

Clinton’s Untenable Taxation I
The serious economic problem of the 1993 tax increase.

William P. Kucewicz is editor of GeoInvestor.com and a former editorial board member of The Wall Street Journal
October 30, 2001, 8:00 a.m.

EXCERPT

Nominal GDP has risen 53% since the 1993 third quarter, while individual income-tax payments have soared 110% — more than doubling from $510 billion to an estimated $1.073 trillion. By comparison, corporate income taxes have risen 81%, and Social Security and other retirement payments have increased 61%. Individual income taxes now supply more than 50% of total federal revenue (versus 44% in 1993). Corporate income taxes account for 10% of federal receipts (little changed from 1993), and retirement payments contribute 32% (versus 37%).

Since the Clinton tax increase, individual income taxes (excluding Social Security) have climbed from 7.8% of GDP to more than 10%. That's the highest rate in U.S. history. Following the Reagan tax cuts of the early 1980s, federal income taxes paid by individuals in fiscal 1984 fell to 7.8% of GDP and then stayed within a relatively narrow range of approximately 7.6% to 8.5% of GDP until the 1993 tax hike.

 

[The Galatian]

Sorry. Bush's own people say Reagan's tax increase was the largest in inflation-constant dollars, and by far the largest in terms of percentage of GDP. Didn't you read the link. When a republican admnistration admits it, there isn't a whole lot of wiggle room.

Your guy made a good try, though. What he isn't telling you is that federal revenue went up so much because the economy grew at a rapid pace. He points out that revenue fell in Reagan's time. It fell because real income declined. And so fewer taxes.

Check out the Statistical Abstract of the United States, and look up personal income for those periods (use inflation constant dollars).

Doesn't he know that? Sure he does. But he correctly assumed you didn't.

Anyway you cut it. Reagan was the all-time tax-and-spend champion.

 

[Hope of Glory]

federal revenue went up so much because the economy grew at a rapid pace.

Well, I'm glad you finally admitted this.

Now, how about some info from the JEC?

The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform

 

[Daisy]

The graphs might be interesting, Daisy. But I don't need a graph to tell me that, historically, tax cuts have increased government revenues.

That hasn't been proven. Perhaps a graph would or perhaps it would show that an increase in government spending is what stimulated the economy rather than the counter-intuitive tax cuts. The tax cuts do seem to increase debt.

I'd have to check to see if past Congresses have squandered that extra revenue, plus some, like this Congress has.

I think we can agree that that is a given.

A tax increase will not slow down Congressional spending. It will only exacerbate the problem.

I don't know if it will have any effect on government allocations, but at least billions won't be going towards interest.

How much money is China making off us this year in debt funding?