To: Just_Observing who wrote (2799 ) 2/16/2004 12:49:33 PM From: Lizzie Tudor Read Replies (1) | Respond to wondering why Bush, despite Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, decided to go for broke. didn't know he was going for broke. Bush hired an incompetant team in the areas of treasury, trade and labor. These people along with GWB assumed early on in the recession (pre and post-911) that the US recovery would bounce right back like all other recessions. The technology industry was driving growth then, and Bush has never visited the tech centers in MA and CA (except once to visit a defense firm). Bush and his cronies were bitter about being left off the 90s boom while all these tech kids got rich, so their "growth plan" consisted of a two pronged approach, one approach was the typical liquidity driven tax cut for the rich, the other a dividend tax cut intended to make smokestack industry stocks as valuable as tech growth stocks. But underneath this "policy", there was a underlying theme that the US economy would bounce back and in the next upcycle the Bush cronies would benefit more than they had in the 90s.even higher deficits than anyone imagined, when the tax rolls came in as significantly under plan. Bush cannot talk about the fact that the deficit balloon is *really* a result of underfunded tax receipts, because that would draw attention to the jobs crisis that he is trying to cover up. So he just acts like this deficit is "manageable" even though I am certain no republican ever intended this mess.
