Bush Rules Out Tax Hike to Fund Recovery

[Irvine511]

maybe we can cut the department of education? HUD?

guns *and* butter!


Bush Rules Out Tax Hike to Fund Recovery
Sep 16 3:37 PM US/Eastern


By NEDRA PICKLER
Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON


President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut. "You bet it will cost money, but I'm confident we can handle it," he said.

"It's going to cost whatever it's going to cost, and we're going to be wise about the money we spend," Bush said a day after laying out an expensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast without spelling out how he would pay for it.

[...]

Also Friday, White House officials said taxpayers at home will pay the bill for the massive reconstruction program and that this will mean a deeper budget deficit.

Bush said it's important that government quickly fix the region's infrastructure to give people hope. Asked who would pay for the work and how it would impact the nation's rising debt, Bush said he was confident the United States could pay for reconstruction "and our other priorities."

He said that means "cutting unnecessary spending" and maintaining economic growth, "which means we should not raise taxes."

[...]

On Friday, Al Hubbard, chairman of Bush's National Economic Council, said the disaster costs _ estimated at $200 billion and beyond _ are "coming from the American taxpayer." He acknowledged the costs would swell the deficit _ projected at $333 billion for the current year before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

Some fiscal conservatives are expressing alarm at the prospect of such massive federal outlays without cutting other spending.

"It is inexcusable for the White House and Congress to not even make the effort to find at least some offsets to this new spending," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.

Allen said the administration had not identified any budget cuts to offset the disaster expense. Congress already has approved $62 billion for the disaster, but that is expected to run out next month.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/09/16/D8CLHTRG0.html

 

[Kieran McConville]

Oh im sure the money will come from somewhere, just magically whisked into being by national greatness or something. In fact maybe it's time for another tax cut!

 

[VertigoGal]

It seems like if liberals are "tax and spend" conservatives recently are just "spend spend spend and don't tax because I'll be dead before we have to deal with the defecit."

Although I think it's less a matter of needing to raise taxes, and more a matter of actually using the money in a responsible way.

 

[marietta]

hmmmm.....wonder if Bush saw the Clinton interview on NBC....

 

[Irvine511]

gas tax! gas tax!

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

forego a tax cut for the rich? what a novel concept..

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/18/katrina.cost/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Since the president prefers not to raise taxes to finance Hurricane Katrina recovery, three senators suggested Sunday that Congress cut spending, delay a Medicare prescription benefit and forego a tax cut for the rich.

 

[sulawesigirl4]

I wonder if they are still going to try to pass the estate tax repeal. That's what we really need after all. Tax relief for the filthy rich!

 

[Irvine511]

gas tax! gas tax!

 

[Irvine511]

Clinton: "What Americans need to understand is that ... every single day of the year, our government goes into the market and borrows money from other countries to finance Iraq, Afghanistan, Katrina, and our tax cuts. ... We have never done this before. Never in the history of our republic have we ever financed a conflict, military conflict, by borrowing money from somewhere else. ... We depend on Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and Korea primarily to basically loan us money every day of the year to cover my tax cut and these conflicts and Katrina. I don't think it makes any sense."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050918/wl_afp/usweatheriraqeconomy_050918200308

 

[Se7en]

for anyone using apple's tiger:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/games/deficitcounter.html

 

[verte76]

I'm against a gas tax because of the price of gas, and it's a consumer tax. I have never liked Bush's tax cuts, and I still don't.

 

[BostonAnne]

This is so irresponsible

 

[Irvine511]

it's like a husband who beats his wife, then shows up on the doorstep with flowers, a box of chocolate, and a necklace.

yes, just throw money at the problem. buy back the love.

 

[Se7en]

someone here should be defending this. the silence is eerie.

 

[Scarletwine]

Some stats on this. Even my occassionally correct Senator Voinovich is in favor.

KATRINA RELIEF AND FEDERAL SPENDING AND DEFICITS
By Jim Horney, Robert Greenstein, and Richard Kogan

Some conservative lawmakers and pundits are arguing that while the funding for relief and recovery efforts from the hurricane may be money that the nation has to spend, the costs will swell federal spending to dangerous and unprecedented levels. This claim is being used both to advance calls for sharp cuts in other domestic programs — in order to offset the costs of relief and recovery efforts — and to reject any suggestion that the tax cuts of recent years be revisited to even a modest degree.

The rhetoric about an explosion in federal spending is not supported by the facts.

Even with the hefty Katrina relief and recovery costs, total projected federal spending will not be high by historical standards. If relief and recovery from Katrina costs $150 billion over the next five years, total federal spending over this period is projected to equal, on average, 20 percent of GDP. (We use a five-year period because the Congressional Budget Office projects that Katrina costs will be spread over the years through 2009, with the largest costs occurring in 2006 and 2007.) If Katrina costs total $200 billion, total federal spending will average 20.1 percent of GDP over the next five years.

In either case, this level of spending will be lower, as a share of the economy, than federal spending in every year from 1975 through 1996. (The estimates of 20 percent and 20.1 percent of GDP are based on Congressional Budget Office projections. They include the costs of all current programs, the new costs of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the continued costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, assuming that those costs phase down over coming years, and the costs from Hurricane Katrina. [1])
Total projected federal revenues are low by historical standards. Total revenues in 2006 through 2010 are projected to average 17.2 percent of GDP. (This assumes that expiring tax cuts and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax are continued.) This is lower than in any year from 1977 through 2002.

In other words, even with the large relief and recovery costs, deficits will stem more from lower-than-normal levels of tax revenue than from unusually high levels of spending.
The tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 cost more each year than the total amount likely to be spent on Katrina. The cost of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 is $225 billion this year alone and will climb to higher levels each year in the future, as more of the tax cuts enacted in 2001 take full effect. Assuming that expiring tax provisions are extended and AMT relief is continued, the cost of the tax cuts will average $250 billion a year over the next five years. The cost of the tax cuts in a single year exceeds the total anticipated costs of all expenses related to the hurricane over the years to come.
The costs of Iraq also are likely to exceed the costs of Katrina. According to the Congressional Research Service, a total of $192 billion has been appropriated for the war in Iraq.[2] Some who now decry the costs of Katrina have not been as vocal about the costs of the war.
The nation’s serious deficit problem predated Katrina. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that before Katrina struck, the deficit would exceed $300 billion every year for the next 10 years and total nearly $4.5 trillion over the 2006-2015 period, if the expiring tax cuts are extended, AMT relief is continued, and the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan phase down.
Spending for Katrina will add relatively little to the large deficits already projected for the next 10 years. If total funding for the response to Katrina equals $150 billion, the deficit will be increased by a total of $230 billion over the next ten years ($150 billion in direct costs, plus $80 billion to pay interest on the $150 billion that will have to be borrowed and thus will be added to the debt). This will be on top of the deficit of $4.5 trillion projected for 2006 through 2015 without the hurricane’s costs. The projected deficit thus will be increased by about five percent. The only permanent cost stemming from Katrina will be the added interest payments on the debt, which will average about $10 billion a year in 2011 through 2015.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

End Notes:

[1] All projections cited here start with the baseline in the Congressional Budget Office’s August 2005 report, The Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update. That baseline is then adjusted to include the effects of the following policies, as shown in Table 1-6 of CBO’s report: (1) extending the expiring tax cuts (except for the provision dealing with repatriation of profits held abroad by American corporations); (2) continuation of relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax; (3)and a phase-down of activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. The projections of the cost of Katrina relief reflect CBPP’s estimate of outlays from appropriations of $150 billion or $200 billion for Katrina relief, based on CBO’s estimate of outlays from the $62 billion in Katrina relief that has already been appropriated.

 

[Zootomic]

Bush was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. This is a man who I guarantee has never even seen a checkbook much less had to balance one. I say this in all seriousness, not as any kind of facetious exaggeration - our president does not understand how a budget works. Plus, he is and always will be interested only in one thing: pushing through tax cuts and other benefits for the corporations and rich pals who put him into office. He does not understand nor does he care how far into debt this country will be by the time he struts and grins his way out of office. He and his pals will be richer and that's all that counts to him.

Every single American alive today will be dealing with the financial repercussions from this administration for the rest of our lives and probably so will our children. The middle class conservatives who proudly voted for him need to wake up and realise this because it is a fact. It's probably too late now to do anything about it, but they should at least stop defending him.

 

[Zoomerang96]

it really is amazing isn't it?

do any of you really think you'll ever get out of debt? your country is seriously fiscally fucked.

it's time to face the music. raising taxes ISN'T EVIL! how else will you ever pay all that money back???

and what's stopping another katrina or other natural disaster from happening? maybe bush can wage war on the environment.

oh wait...

 

[Zoomerang96]

oh, and i'd like to point out that canada is well on their way to a ninth consecutive budget surplus.

yeah, amazing what EVIL liberals can do for a country, eh?

EH?

message brought to you by the liberal party of canada who in most recent polls have shown to have completely recovered from adscam.

 

[Zootomic]

Here's a site guaranteed to scare the crap out of every American who isn't filthy rich like George W:
http://www.house.gov/cardoza/BlueDogs/bluedogs.shtml

Watching those numbers race upward, I can picture myself a few decades from now with no Social Security, no Medicare, and working until I drop dead. Yep, the future sure is rosy isn't it Georgie boy?

 

[financeguy]

The mentality of this current administration seems to be that tax hikes to stimulate the economy are Keynesian economics and therefore no better than communism.