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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JakeStraw who wrote (410172)	5/29/2003 5:01:53 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Death is easy. Taxes are hard. ----------------------------------------- Largest federal tax increases measured as a percent of the economy: #1) (FDR) Remember World War II? To help pay for it, federal taxes were increased by a staggering 14.8 percent of the GDP (from fiscal 1940 to 1944). By 1996 standards, that's a tax hike of $1,086 billion a year 24 times as large as Clinton's 1993 Act. #2) (Truman) The Korean War required a federal tax increase of 4.6 percent of the GDP. That's $337 billion in 1996 terms, more than seven times bigger than the Clinton Act. Truman asked Congress for a $9-$10 billion tax increase Feb. 2, followed by a request for a later $61/2 billion increase in order to balance the 1952 budget. ...increase individual tax rates by four percent, to raise about $4 billion. The top tax rate on corporations rose from 47 percent to 55 percent to collect another $3 billion. Another $3 billion from new excise taxes and increasing the existing excise taxes. #3) (LBJ) The surtax enacted at the end of the Johnson administration to finance the Vietnam War amounted to 2.1 percent of the GDP. That's $154 billion a year in 1996 terms or three and a half times larger than Clinton's annual tax boost. #4)(Reagan) In 1982 Ronald Reagan signed Bob Dole's Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act. Still in effect, those tax hikes will raise an estimated $68 billion in fiscal 1996 ($72 billion if you count the gasoline tax hike also enacted in 1982). At one percent of the GDP, the Reagan-Dole 1982 tax increase is half again bigger than Clinton's 1993 tax act. * #5) (Reagan) One might also note that two tax bills enacted in 1983 and 1984 one to rescue Social Security, the other for deficit reduction will raise about $67 billion in fiscal 1996 again considerably more than Clinton's tax hike. #6) Clinton's 1993 tax act initially raise an estimated $44 billion, or about 0.6 percent of the gross domestic product. * #6) George HW Bush signed a tax increase of similar magnitude in 1990. When measured in constant dollars (and ignoring the size of the economy, i.e., adjusting for inflation and ranking only by dollars raised): The Revenue Act of 1942, which was under consideration from March 3 until final passage on October 21, provided the largest Federal tax increases in history. The four largest tax increases in the past twenty years were in 1982, 1983, 1990 and 1993 (Reagan [& Dole], Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton.) Largest tax increase in peacetime history: On August 19, 1982, Bob Dole voted for the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA) -- the largest peacetime tax increase in history according to any reasonable analysis. Bob Dole authored and pushed for this tax increase that raised $298 billion over five years, in inflation-adjusted dollars. [HR 4691, 1982 CQ Almanac, Vote #335, p. 55-S; Wall Street Journal, 10/26/94; Joint Tax Committee, 6/23/93] New York Times, 7/11/96: "It is not true that the $240 billion tax increase approved by Congress in 1993 at Mr. Clinton's behest is the largest in American history. When adjusted for inflation -- the only way to make comparisons of dollar amounts from different years -- a tax increase engineered by Mr. Dole in 1982, when he was the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was larger." Wall Street Journal, 10/26/94: "Contrary to Republican claims, the 1993 package ... is not 'the largest tax increase in history.' The 1982 deficit reduction package of President Reagan and Sen. Robert Dole in a GOP-controlled Senate was a bigger tax bill, both in 1993-adjusted dollars and as a percentage of the overall economy." Joint Tax Committee, 6/23/93: "[T]he tax increases proposed in the Administration's budget are smaller than the tax increases enacted in the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA)." Los Angeles Times, 8/7/93: "Nor is the [1993] plan the biggest tax increase in history, as Republicans contended. With inflation factored in, the largest tax increase was the one enacted in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan and engineered in the Senate Finance Committee by its then-Chairman, Bob Dole." Christian Science Monitor, 8/6/93: "Senate minority leader Robert Dole called Mr. Clinton's plan the �largest tax increase in the history of the world.� Canceling out the exaggerations of inflation, however, this tax hike will not surpass the one drafted largely by Mr. Dole in 1982."