Bush still thinks he has credibility on reducing the deficit

January 20, 2006

Last week, the White House said it expects the federal budget deficit to soar in 2006, topping $400 billion again after dipping into the $300-billion range in the fiscal year that ended in September 2005. This week, the president says he has it all under control.

Offering a sneak preview of his economic State of the Union, President Bush said Thursday that budget deficits do not justify tax increases.

“The best way to solve the deficit is to grow the economy, not run up your taxes,” Bush told a friendly crowd, saying he would again press Congress to make his tax cuts permanent.

Let me get this straight. Bush inherited the biggest budget surplus in American history and, just four years later, ran the biggest deficit in American history while adding trillions to the national debt. Now, he believes he understands the “best way to solve the deficit.”

Isn’t this a bit like an arsonist lecturing us on how best to put out fires?

Please consult your NewSpeak manual (G. Orwell author, circa 1984), and you will see that Big Brother, er, Dear Father is certainly correct.

  • Remember Paul Simon’s song “Still Crazy After All These Years ”

    Maybe the pResident should have one titled “Still Delusional After All These Years”

  • Speaking of tax increases, the White House is saying nothing about the creeping tax increases from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). And they aren’t going to say anything. Why? Because they need the revenue to make their numbers work.

    How much are we talking about here? Plenty. Repealing the AMT in 2005 “would reduce revenues by $660 billion through 2014 if the 2001 tax cut expires as scheduled in 2010, and about $1,090 billion if the tax cut is extended.”

    And more and more taxpayers will have to pay, each and every year. The AMT “is whacking millions of fairly ordinary Americans. In fact, according to the Treasury Department, next year a typical family with two children will have to pay the AMT if its income exceeds $67,890. And by 2015, as many as 50 million taxpayers will have to pay it.”

    “Washington insiders for some time now have been laughing that it would be cheaper for the government to repeal the regular income tax and keep the AMT.”

    Ha, ha. Pretty funny, huh.

  • Am I mistaken? Isn’t the war in Iraq off budget?
    If so, this administration is totally off the wall.

    Huge tax cuts for the rich at a time when
    money was/is desperately needed to fund
    Bush’s folly in Iraq? What will history say
    about us?

    Or am I mistaken? That the deficit includes
    the war cost?

  • Stolen from the Rude Pundit:
    C’mon, this is like a black man in the South in the 1920s having sex with a white woman in the middle of a Klan meeting because the flames of the burning cross are so romantic. It’s like a mohel walking into the middle of Hitler rally and saying, “Who wants a circumcision? I’ll give you a good price.” It’s like an Iraqi walking into Abu Ghraib, dropping his pants, and saying, “I know where the weapons are, and I bet you can’t beat it out of me.”

  • Bush doesn’t give a damn about reducing the deficit, let alone balancing budgets. Never has. He’s squandered everything he’s ever been handed — birth to a wealthy family, the finest educational opportunities (undeserved), oil companies and baseball teams given him by his father’s pals, etc. Now he’s busy turning a gift/theft of the presidency (via Jeb, Kathryn Harris, Supreme Court) into the worst presidency in history — greater debt than all previous presidents combined (a large debt owed to the Chinese), a truly wasteful, unprovoked invasion of Iraq (inflaming the Mulsim world against us), turning post-9/11 universal brotherhood from the world’s nations and the opposition party (so callled) in the US into nearly universal hatred of George W. Bush. He’s truly a man who has never done anything beyond destroying everything he was given. On top of a life time of squandering everything he’s been given, he is (like most drunks) an inveterate liar. Don’t expect him to address the deficit, no matter how much he says he will.

  • What Ed said. Everyone knows that Bush has no interest in economic policy beyond using it as a justification for tax cuts. Cutting taxes is all he cares about. When there was a surplus he campaigned on returning that wealth to taxpayers via tax cuts for “ordinary Americans”. We should have guessed that a man who’s had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter by his father would have a rather skewed view of what ordinary Americans are. When the economy tanked, what was his solution? Tax cuts. Unemployment went up, what would create jobs? Tax cuts? Nope. Wait. Yes! Tax cuts! Now that his irresponsible tax cuts have given us the biggest deficit in history, what is his solution? Tax cuts. Are you sensing a theme here? More importantly, do you sense an economic policy, much less an interest in economic health? Neither do I.

  • hark, the cost of iraq is included in the deficit. what you are referencing is that it’s not in the budget, because they keep funding the war through supplemental appropriations.

    however, to get a true picture of the budget deficit, we should eliminate the impact of the social security surplus, so effectively, we get the same result: the deficit is even worse than it appears.

    and bush doesn’t appear to have the intellectual ability to grasp what every honest supply sider will tell him: you cannot replace all the revenue you lose from tax cuts with increased growth. study after study demonstrates this, not that the faith-based administration gives a good god-damn.

  • Georgie Boy is interested only in making money for his supporters and he doesn’t care who knows. At least in the past the pols would try to hide this. Now I truly understand the statement, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrups absolutely.” Unless we take back Congress we will never be able to go after these crooks.

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