Kristen writes:
...no one is saying that tax cuts fully pay for themselves, but what we are saying is that lowering tax rates encourages the taxed behavior and expands the tax base, offsetting some of the revenue loss.Yes plenty of Republicans in leadership positions have said the exact opposite of that quote. They have in fact said tax cuts do not have to be paid for or offset at all.
Sen. Jon Kyl: "[Y]ou should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes," Jon Kyl said on Fox News Sunday. "Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to -- if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that's what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans."
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH): "I tend to think that tax cuts should not have to be offset."
Sen. Tom Coburn: "Continuing the [Bush] tax cuts isn't a cost, if you added new taxes, new tax cuts, I would agree that's a cost."
I'm sure I could post more and more quotes by Republicans but you get the point. Heck, even Sen. Mitch McConnell said that tax cuts not being offset is the belief of "virtually every Republican." So saying that no one is saying such stuff is far from the truth. Now maybe Kristen isn't saying such stuff but the post wasn't about what Kristen was saying. It was about what the people Kristen votes for were saying. And they have maintained as repetitively as possible that tax cuts do not have to be paid for.
That brings us to another point of fiction left in the comment. "What people HAVE been saying but you won't open your mind is that the Bush tax cuts are not the main reason why we have trillion dollar deficits today." Just not true.
The largest contributor to the budget deficit is the Bush tax cuts, which were renewed last month.
Kristen calls these charts "stupid." They are stupid because they do not reflect the Republican Fantasy World where cuts in revenue don't have to be offset, George Bush was a popular president, and Iraq had something to do with 9/11. It's a world where the sun always shines and endless war is patriotic.
As you can clearly see from the chart, Bush's tax cuts and his endless wars add more to the deficit than TARP or the stimulus act. Actually, by the end of this year alone, you could combine all the rescue measures together and they wouldn't even equal the loss in revenue produced by the tax cuts and the wars.
Another "stupid" chart that visibly spells out the impact of the tax cuts on the deficit is this one.
Again you can clearly see the largest contributors to the budget deficit are Bush policies like his tax cuts, his wars, his huge unfunded expansion to Medicare and whatnot. But again these calculations are not acceptable versions of reality to Republicans. Such charts show the devastating impact of Republican policies on this country. They are "stupid" and obviously created by tree hugging hippies that want to destroy America. Toss them aside they are not to be believed. No one Serious or Mainstream could possibly suggest Bush policies created huge deficits.
When such flat rejection of reality is used to debate politics it becomes impossible to converse. And all that's left are the people trying to clean up the mess and those who think everything is spotless.
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