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

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (602070)	8/10/2004 6:42:48 AM
From: PROLIFE	Respond to of 769670

"DISTORT"---READ--- MoRons.org LIES New MoveOn Ads Attack, Distort Bush's Record August 10, 2004 (CNSNews.com) - The liberal MoveOn.org PAC asked its supporters Monday to rate 17 potential television ads attacking President Bush, one of which will be aired during the Republican National Convention later this month. The so-called "Real People" ads, which can be found on the MoveOn.org PAC's website, feature an assortment of individuals who claim to be former Bush supporters who have declared their allegiance to Sen. John Kerry, the Democrat nominee. One of the ads attacks Bush for cutting education funding and veterans' benefits. Democrats have frequently used those two issues to criticize the president. "They promise things like No Child Left Behind, and yet they cut educational funding. They say they're for the military, and yet they cut veterans benefits," says Ben Taylor, an information technology technician featured in one ad. "Come on. Let's solve some world problems instead of creating them. I'm a Republican, and that doesn't change. But I'm voting for those Democrats." But based on Bush's latest budget, education spending would increase 35.8 percent in just four years, from $42.2 billion in 2001 to $57.3 billion in 2005. Likewise, the Veterans Affairs budget would jump 37.6 percent under his watch. Another spot, featuring police dispatcher Kenneth Berg, criticizes Bush for not providing enough funding for local police departments. "From what I have seen, homeland security, it seems to exists more in title than in anything else," Berg says in the ad. "Money has supposedly been allocated, but I don't see where. We don't have more personnel on the roads or patrolling our streets than we did before 9/11. My personal opinion, homeland security amounts to nothing." Dating back to his 2003 budget, released months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bush proposed a $3.5 billion boost to aid first responders, which the White House called a "10-fold increase" in federal resources. In Bush's latest budget, he proposes $3.6 billion for first-responder grants and $1.3 billion for state, local and hospital bioterrorism preparedness grants. cnsnews.com\Politics\archive\200408\POL20040810a.html

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (602070)	8/10/2004 10:22:22 AM
From: Knight	Respond to of 769670

Would be interested in seeing data to back up your assertion. Below is a link that analyzes the Reagan tax cuts and their effect. Note that I didn't claim Reagan's tax cuts caused revenues to go up more than they would have without the tax cuts (that's the supply-side argument). I merely pointed out that revenues didn't go down. It is disingenuous for supply-siders to claim that revenues went up after the Reagan tax cuts merely because of the tax cuts because that assertion is impossible to prove and grossly oversimplifies the factors involved. However, it is an equally disengenous oversimplification for liberals to say that the deficits were caused by the Reagan tax cuts while ignoring the spending side of the equation--especially since revenues didn't go down. Also, like the supply-siders, they too, are relying on an unprovable assertion (i.e. that the reduction of top marginal tax rates caused a decrease in revenues over what they would have been had the rates been left alone). The link below has, what appears to me, some rather objective analysis of the data surrounding the effect of Reagan & Kennedy tax cuts. home.att.net The Laffer curve in economics asserts that at some point an increase in marginal tax rates actually leads to a decrease in collected revenues (due to the disencentives involved). Where that point is on the curve is a matter for honest debate. At the current level of tax rates, I don't believe that reductions in the rate will necessarily yield an increase in revenues--at least in the short term. However, I do believe that increases in the top rate will harm the economy since higher rates reduces the individual's reward & incentives for economic success. Keeping taxes low is a means of protecting our economic system. We simply cannot allow the federal government to continue to take a higher and higher percentage of the GDP and maintain our economic system. I also object to high, confiscatory rates on a moral basis. I believe it's immoral for government to sieze such a high percentage of of people's income. The top rate is already over 39% (with state and local taxes on top of that), so we're already at the level of legal plunder. [And no, I don't pay at the top rate. In fact I'm still in the 15% bracket.]