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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (32682)	2/13/2009 8:01:26 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

1 - A recession started in 2001. So government revenue would be expected to go down. Not true. It was a very mild recession and GDP change for 2001 was positive. It wasn't a very deep recession, but it was deeper than the last one, and wasn't a short recession. In any case "a mild recession", or even "a very mild recession" would still lead to the expectation of lower government revenue. GDP change for 2001, includes the pre-recession period. If your trying to argue that "tax revenue went down for 2001 even though GDP was up slightly", well tax policy for 2001 was set by Clinton and the previous congress. The first budget and tax year for Bush's policies (and only some of them, others took longer) would be 2002. Highly dishonest. Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut was passed in 2001 with some of the cuts being retroactive to January 2001. (The same year revenue started declining.) My statement wasn't even slightly dishonest, it was 100% accurate. The full impact of the tax cuts wasn't felt until the 2004 taxes. A significant partial impact was felt before then, but the main factor in reduced revenue was the recession (and then you have to add other factors like 9/11 which resulted in reduced revenue and more spending). Federal revenue goes up pretty much every year. In recessions it often does not. Sometimes it does, but it isn't an every year thing. Also again, the spending increases where larger than the tax cuts, so at worst the tax cuts could be the 2nd biggest reason for the deficits. And in fact the spending increases are enough all by themselves to account for the deficits. No spending increases and we would have had surpluses.