Republicans charge that the 1993 Budget Reduction Bill was "the greatest tax increase in history." That has to be the deception of the decade. It is not only grossly untrue, it distracts the public from appreciating the substantial benefits of the bill.
To come to this conclusion, one has only to read America's premier conservative publication, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Excerpts from its October 26, 1994 issue:
A Vote for Clinton's Economic Program Becomes The Platform for Often-Misleading GOP Attacks
...Contrary to Republican Claims, the 1993 package with a $240 billion tax increase is not "the largest tax increase in history." The 1982 deficit-reduction package of President Reagan and Sen. Robert Dole in a GOP-controlled Senate was a bigger tax bill, both in 1993-adjusted dollars and as a percentage of the overall economy; and both recent laws are dwarfed by the tax bills of World War II.
Moreover, except for a small gasoline-tax boost and an increase for the best-off Social Security recipients the tax increases in last year's bill mostly didn't touch the middle class but hit the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans. GOP candidates also ignore the bill's tax cuts for individuals and businesses, and nowhere do they describe the plan as a five-year deficit-reduction package.
It's the silly season. People are running for office, and people who run for office say silly things," says Carol Cox Wait, a former top GOP aide on the Senate Budget Committee who now heads the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget...
And the WALL STREET JOURNAL's issue of August 1, 1996:
Scary Deficit Forecasts For Clinton Years Fade As Tax Revenue Grows
WASHINGTON-Where has the federal deficit gone?
When Bill Clinton was elected president four years ago, the government was hemorrhaging red ink at a rate of almost $300 billion a year, and forecasters saw little improvement in the offing. Today, his budget office estimates the fiscal 1996 at just $ 117 billion-the lowest in dollar terms since 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office...
Clearly, a stronger-than-expected economy has a lot to do with it. The tax increases in the 1993 deficit-reduction package that Mr. Clinton pushed through get credit as well. And, to a lesser extent, so do the spending cuts engineered by the Republ ican Congress...
By the CBO's analysis, just over half of this $97 billion increase beyond projections is due to tax boosts in Mr. Clinton's 1993 antideficit plan.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, just about says it all.
Melon
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"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time
To come to this conclusion, one has only to read America's premier conservative publication, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Excerpts from its October 26, 1994 issue:
A Vote for Clinton's Economic Program Becomes The Platform for Often-Misleading GOP Attacks
...Contrary to Republican Claims, the 1993 package with a $240 billion tax increase is not "the largest tax increase in history." The 1982 deficit-reduction package of President Reagan and Sen. Robert Dole in a GOP-controlled Senate was a bigger tax bill, both in 1993-adjusted dollars and as a percentage of the overall economy; and both recent laws are dwarfed by the tax bills of World War II.
Moreover, except for a small gasoline-tax boost and an increase for the best-off Social Security recipients the tax increases in last year's bill mostly didn't touch the middle class but hit the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans. GOP candidates also ignore the bill's tax cuts for individuals and businesses, and nowhere do they describe the plan as a five-year deficit-reduction package.
It's the silly season. People are running for office, and people who run for office say silly things," says Carol Cox Wait, a former top GOP aide on the Senate Budget Committee who now heads the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget...
And the WALL STREET JOURNAL's issue of August 1, 1996:
Scary Deficit Forecasts For Clinton Years Fade As Tax Revenue Grows
WASHINGTON-Where has the federal deficit gone?
When Bill Clinton was elected president four years ago, the government was hemorrhaging red ink at a rate of almost $300 billion a year, and forecasters saw little improvement in the offing. Today, his budget office estimates the fiscal 1996 at just $ 117 billion-the lowest in dollar terms since 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office...
Clearly, a stronger-than-expected economy has a lot to do with it. The tax increases in the 1993 deficit-reduction package that Mr. Clinton pushed through get credit as well. And, to a lesser extent, so do the spending cuts engineered by the Republ ican Congress...
By the CBO's analysis, just over half of this $97 billion increase beyond projections is due to tax boosts in Mr. Clinton's 1993 antideficit plan.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, from THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, just about says it all.
Melon
------------------
"He had lived through an age when men and women with energy and ruthlessness but without much ability or persistence excelled. And even though most of them had gone under, their ignorance had confused Roy, making him wonder whether the things he had striven to learn, and thought of as 'culture,' were irrelevant. Everything was supposed to be the same: commercials, Beethoven's late quartets, pop records, shopfronts, Freud, multi-coloured hair. Greatness, comparison, value, depth: gone, gone, gone. Anything could give some pleasure; he saw that. But not everything provided the sustenance of a deeper understanding." - Hanif Kureishi, Love in a Blue Time
