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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (559021)	4/6/2010 12:42:08 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576152

J. James's lawyer should write a romance novel...he keeps coming up with one liner's like this one: Jesse James Wants to be Home with Sandra Bullock

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (559021)	4/6/2010 12:57:56 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576152

This is winger logic at its finest. The author of this piece is up in arms over Zakaria's comment that if it weren't for Bush's tax cuts, we wouldn't have had any deficits. The author claims that revenues went up inspite of the tax cuts and that if it hadn't been for big bad spending increases, there wouldn't have any deficits. Well....duh! He doesn't bother to look into the matter with any depth....like maybe revenues might have gone up faster had there not been any tax cuts or that maybe you shouldn't start two wars while cutting taxes. Just for the record....Newsbusters is supposed to be the conservative's answer to Media Matters or Snopes. Sorry Charlie! Actually, the shame is all Zakaria's, for the ignorance on display was astounding. In fiscal 2000 before the Bush tax cuts, our government brought in $2.025 trillion in unified revenues while spending $1.789 trillion. Seven years later, before the recession hit, we received $2.568 trillion, a 27 percent increase. BUT, our expenditures rose to $2.729 trillion, a 53 percent rise. What this means is that our spending grew at TWICE THE RATE as tax receipts. And Zakaria and his ilk blame deficits on tax cuts! To further illustrate the stupidity on display, even with tax cuts, receipts grew faster than the rate of inflation. BUT, if our elected officials would have kept spending to the rate of inflation during this period, our outlays in 2007 would have totaled $2.154 trillion resulting in a surplus of $414 billion! Now, let's look at what a recession and an almost unprecedented explosion in expenditures has done. In 2009, we brought in $2.105 trillion in tax receipts. Bear in mind that even with a recession this was still greater than BEFORE the Bush tax cuts were implemented. BUT, we spent $3.517 trillion, or 97 percent more than BEFORE the Bush tax cuts. If spending had been kept at the level of inflation during this period, outlays would have been $2.229 trillion producing a deficit of only $124 billion INSTEAD of the $1.413 trillion we generated. As such, the next time someone tells you our current budget woes are all because of Bush's tax cuts, remind them that we're spending twice as much as we did back then with expenditures actually having grown at four times the rate of inflation...but don't hold your breath they'll understand your point. —Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter. Read more: newsbusters.org