{"id":4174,"date":"2010-06-20T08:16:48","date_gmt":"2010-06-20T12:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4174"},"modified":"2010-06-20T08:38:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-20T12:38:29","slug":"insanity-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/06\/20\/insanity-3\/","title":{"rendered":"insanity&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"justify\"><em>Last night, I ran into a Democrat friend &#8211; rare in these parts. We were trying to talk, but the guy across the table couldn&#8217;t tolerate it. He said something about &quot;fair taxes&quot; and was off and running about his small [medium actually] business being overtaxed. The he was talking about &quot;Obama doesn&#8217;t believe in tax-cuts as a stimulus.&quot; When he said. &quot;Why when Reagan &#8230;&quot; I had to go to the bathroom where I hid until they disengaged and then I snuck back. I&#8217;m old now, and I feel I&#8217;ve earned the right to just leave when I can see that discussion is useless. Later, my Democrat friend said, &quot;he said he just votes for whomever offers the biggest tax cut&quot; and rolled his eyes. I thought of this article I flagged last week: <\/em>   <\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/jon-perr\/boehner-lies-about-bush-tax-cuts-and-deficits\">Boehner Lies About Bush Tax Cuts and Deficits<\/a><br \/>      Crooks and Liars<\/strong><br \/>      By Jon Perr  on Taxes <br \/>      June 12, 2010 <\/div>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"447\" height=\"287\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/files\/uploads\/2010\/06\/cbpp_bush_tax_cuts_deficit_1cef5.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">&quot;Reagan,&quot;  Dick Cheney famously said in 2002, &quot;proved deficits  don&#8217;t matter.&quot; Until, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. And it  so was on Friday, when House Minority Leader John Boehner [R-OH] insisted the Bush tax cuts did  not help produce a hemorrhage of red ink from the U.S. Treasury. Of  course, the national debt didn&#8217;t just double during Bush&#8217;s  tenure. As it turns out, the Bush tax cut windfall for the wealthy accounted for  almost half the budget deficits during his presidency and the lion&#8217;s  share over the next decade.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">As <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/on-the-money\/domestic-taxes\/102443-boehner-bush-tax-cuts-didnt-lead-to-the-deficit\">The Hill<\/a> <\/strong>reported Thursday, Rep. Boehner in his  discussion of the deficit conveniently omitted mention of the Republican  mismanagement which helped produce it. Claiming increased spending to  fight the Bush recession is &quot;scaring the hell out of the American  people,&quot; Boehner wrongly declared:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p align=\"justify\"><em>&quot;It&#8217;s not the  marginal tax rates &#8230; that&#8217;s not what led to the budget deficit. The  revenue problem we have today is a result of what happened in the  economic collapse some 18 months ago. We&#8217;ve  seen over the last 30 years that lower marginal tax rates have led to a  growing economy, more employment and more people paying taxes.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">Leave  aside for the moment that President Bush authored the <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perrspectives.com\/blog\/archives\/001656.htm\">worst eight-year economic record<\/a><\/strong> of any modern  president or that John Boehner like other Republicans is trying to give the GOP credit for the Clinton boom (which also  occurred during a time of higher tax rates. John Boehner&#8217;s myth-making  notwithstanding, it was precisely the Bush tax cuts which <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perrspectives.com\/blog\/archives\/001743.htm\">devastated the Treasury<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">In 2001, as you may  recall, George W. Bush inherited a federal budget in the black and CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10  years. As The Hill noted Thursday:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p align=\"justify\"><em>In January  2001, before the Bush tax cuts were enacted, the nonpartisan  Congressional Budget Office projected annual budget surpluses of  approximately $800 billion between 2009 and 2012. The CBO now projects a  $1.2 trillion annual deficit for those years and has also stated that  the Bush tax cuts contributed to the budget deficit.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And  how.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">President George W. Bush quickly set about dismantling the  progress made under Clinton. Bush&#8217;s $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a second  $550 billion round in 2003. As the Center  on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) detailed, those Bush tax  cuts accounted for almost half of the mushrooming deficits during his  tenure.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"301\" height=\"232\" border=\"0\" alt=\"CBPP-deficit_factors_2007_sm_bafaf.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/files\/uploads\/2010\/06\/CBPP-deficit_factors_2007_sm_bafaf.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Like  Reagan and Stockman before him, Bush resorted to the rosy scenario to claim he would halve the budget  deficit by 2009. Before the financial system meltdown last fall, Bush&#8217;s deficit already reached $490 billion. (And  even before the passage of the Wall Street bailout, Bush had presided over a $4 trillion increase in  the national debt, a staggering 71% jump.) By January 2009, the mind-numbing deficit figure  topped $1.2 trillion, forcing President Bush to raise the debt ceiling  to $11.3 trillion. President Obama was exactly right  when he chastised Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling during the House Republicans&#8217; disastrous meeting in January:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>&quot;Now,  look, let&#8217;s talk about the budget once again, because I&#8217;ll go through  it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we  came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. &#8212; $1.3 [trillion.] So  when you say that suddenly I&#8217;ve got a monthly budget that is higher than  the &#8212; a monthly deficit that&#8217;s higher than the annual deficit left by  the Republicans, that&#8217;s factually just not true, and you know it&#8217;s not  true.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And as another recent CBPP analysis revealed (above), over  the next 10 years, the Bush tax cuts will contribute more to the U.S.  budget deficit than the Obama stimulus, the TARP program, the wars in  Afghanistan and Iraq, and revenue lost to the recession &#8211; combined.<\/p>\n<p>An <strong> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perrspectives.com\/blog\/archives\/001668.htm\">AP chart of data<\/a><\/strong> from the Congress Budget Office  showed the explosion of federal debt that will ensue if the Tea Baggers  and their Republican allies get their way in making the Bush tax cuts  permanent.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"273\" border=\"1\" alt=\"debt_bush_tax_cuts_90a58.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/crooksandliars.com\/files\/uploads\/2010\/06\/debt_bush_tax_cuts_90a58.jpg\" title=\"debt_bush_tax_cuts_90a58.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">As  David Leonhardt documented in the <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/10\/business\/economy\/10leonhardt.html\">New York Times<\/a><\/strong> in last June, &quot;President Obama&#8217;s  agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the  deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying.&quot; In a <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2009\/06\/09\/business\/economy\/20090610-leonhardt-graphic.html\">jaw-dropping chart<\/a><\/strong> illustrating how today&#8217;s  trillion-dollar deficits were created, the Times concluded that even  before the Bush recession commenced in December 2007, Dubya&#8217;s  dangerously irresponsible tax cuts and unfunded spending produced an  ocean of red ink that dwarfed the impact of President Obama&#8217;s stimulus  and other spending programs: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<p align=\"justify\"><em>&quot;The economic growth  under George W. Bush did not generate nearly enough tax revenue to pay  for his agenda, which included tax cuts, the Iraq war, and Medicare  prescription drug coverage.&quot;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">And like most of  the other Republican born-again deficit virgins, John Boehner voted for  all of it. Of course, that didn&#8217;t stop him from grandstanding in November that &quot;Washington  Democrats&#8217; so-called &#8216;war on deficits&#8217; is about a year late and more  than a trillion dollars short.&quot; Then as now, you could tell John  Boehner was lying because, as the old expression goes, his lips were  moving.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\">&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2009\/06\/09\/business\/economy\/20090610-leonhardt-graphic.html\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"390\" height=\"661\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/deficits.gif\" \/><br \/><sup>from David Leonhardt, NYT<\/sup><\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">I just can&#8217;t listen to that logic. But I know that arguing with people who expound it has never gotten anywhere. I want to start ranting when I hear such things &#8211; to say things like, &quot;Reagan ran up the National Debt with no plan how to pay it&quot; or &quot;Reagan&#8217;s economics increased the income inequity&quot; or &quot;Reagan cut taxes but, if anything, increased spending&quot; etc. But I&#8217;ve learned to hold my tongue. George W. Bush was even worse. He was still talking about making his income tax cuts permanent when the market coughed and he was spending a trillion dollars shoring up the banks. The reason Bush was worse is that he didn&#8217;t even make up a reason for his economics like Reagan did. He just pushed his very irresponsible plan ahead, borrowing from the Chinese under the table. This graph of mine from last year shows the increases in foreign debt under Clinton and Bush:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" vspace=\"7\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/nd_3.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">We can&#8217;t do what the guy across the table wants us to do. We can&#8217;t let people vote only based on their own economy, as if the government is an enemy. We can&#8217;t let people not know that the debt they say they hate is a Republican phenomenon. I just don&#8217;t know how to bring off the &quot;not letting&quot; when shills like Boehner have the pulpit.<\/div>\n<p> <\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><em>Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.<br \/> <\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I ran into a Democrat friend &#8211; rare in these parts. We were trying to talk, but the guy across the table couldn&#8217;t tolerate it. He said something about &quot;fair taxes&quot; and was off and running about his small [medium actually] business being overtaxed. The he was talking about &quot;Obama doesn&#8217;t believe in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}