Clinton added 22.7 million jobs in 8 years. Bush cut taxes and only added 1.1 million jobs in 8 years. The GOP is framing the ‘phasing out’ of Bush’s tax cuts (for the rich) as a tax increase — counting on their Base to not self-educate or investigate beyond the Fox News sound bites, knowing that will ensure they’ll vote against their own self-interests one more time.
What would Republicans do without the “mosque” flap, if they had to vigorously defend, in detail, their economic program? […] It’s hard to believe the entire country doesn’t remember (with outrage) that Republicans under George W. Bush didn’t have the courage to make the tax cuts permanent when they passed them in 2001. Phasing the cuts out in 2011 masked the enormous hit to the federal budget, and also ensured the GOP could pass them via reconciliation, with a simple majority. (Remember how Bolshevik that idea was when the Democrats proposed using it for healthcare reform?)
I also don’t understand why, if as the Republicans claim, these tax cuts are the secret to job growth, two Bush terms only saw the number of jobs grow by 1.1 million, when jobs grew by 22.7 million under Bill Clinton, at the same time that taxes on the rich were higher. And that’s according to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Politifact.com, which fact-checked a Bush-Clinton job-growth comparison made by liberal Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, and found he was wrong – he actually overestimated job growth under Bush.)
Paul Krugman compares extending the Bush tax cuts to handing a check for $3 million to each of the richest 120,000 people in this country.
So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?
Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.
No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. Instead, as I said, it’s about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.
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Under the Mountain Bunker 