Bruce Bartlett Calls Dubya's Tax Cuts Virtually Useless

Bruce Bartlett, a former Republican who served in both the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations, has put forward a critique of the tax cuts implemented under Dubya (aka. George W. Bush)

To summarize, the original Bush tax cuts, although widely stated as a stimulative supply side tax-break, were in fact designed to offset the revenues the federal state was obtaining during the final years of the Clinton administration in the 1990's. A conceit articulated most prominently by Alan Greenspan, who at the time claimed that fiscal surpluses had grown too large.  Instead of creating sound fiscal policies, Mr. Bush's first term tax-cuts, rebates, and tax code "reforms" were determined by the Republican party to create, according to Bartlett, constituencies that would be grateful to the Great Leader's leadership. He outlines:

Bush proposed a doubling of the child credit to $1,000; higher limits on education savings accounts; a new deduction for two-earner couples; allowing a deduction for charitable contributions by those that don’t file itemized returns; a $400 deduction for teachers who buy unreimbursed school supplies; Individual Development Accounts to allow people to save tax-free for retraining; a refundable tax credit for health insurance; and a tax credit for financial institutions that matched savings by those with low incomes. The only supply-side element was a modest reduction in the top statutory income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent — higher than it had been during Bush’s father’s administration — that would be phased-in over a number of years.

However, in reviewing the actual impact of those tax cuts, Bartlett concludes that it is clear that:

there is virtually no evidence in support of the Bush tax cuts as an economic elixir. To the extent that they had any positive effect on growth, it was very, very modest. Their main effect was simply to reduce the government’s revenue, thereby increasing the budget deficit, which all Republicans claim to abhor.

As my previous post explains, everything the Bush-bots claimed that they were doing and predicted about the country's fiscal situation turned out to be incorrect.  Despite the hysterical reporting by the toadies of the Republican party and Wall Street in the MSM, the tax cuts provided limited or no economic value.  It is therefore complete nonsense that if America's wealthiest and most affluent aren't given even more perks through the extension of the tax breaks, that the entire country will disintegrate.  The plutocrats are the one's who have destroyed the American middle class through their low tax, militaristic, pro-China globalization trade policies.  In the wake of their recklessness, they have increased poverty, diminished social mobility, and promoted a culture of debt that will retard US economic growth for another decade.  Since they are the one's who have felt the least pain in an economic collapse caused by their antics, they should at least bear some of the burden in returning the nation to solvency.