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November 02, 2004
Point/Counterpoint - College Republicans
President Bush took office with an aggressive tax-relief agenda that included increasing tax credits for lower-income families, lowering tax rates for all taxpayers, ending double taxation of dividends, and repealing the death tax. Both of the president’s tax-relief initiatives helped lift the economy out of the
Clinton recession by allowing people to keep more of their money. Lowering the tax burden increases people’s disposable income, frees up funds for investment, and leads to economic growth.
The proof is there for everyone to see. The economy has been growing at the fastest rate since the ’80s, and employment is growing at a healthy pace, gaining nearly two million jobs over the past 13 months.
The Bush administration has the formula: a lower tax burden, higher disposable income, investment, growth, and jobs all imply happy people. This is not good for liberals, because when people are happy, liberals are not.
Enter John Kerry.He has to convince you that the economy is not growing, that you’re paying more hidden taxes, that you don’t have a job, and that you’re not happy.To accomplish this, he has gone back to the oldest play in the Democrat playbookčclass warfare.
John Kerry cannot convince us that we’re unhappy on the facts alone.He has to manufacture relative unhappiness by pointing to the yachts, mansions on Cape Cod, and private chalets in the Rockies of a few gajillionaires (like his wife).
Kerry and his liberal pals say the president’s tax cuts were a windfall for the rich. But the fact is that the share of all income taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans has increased under President Bush. A Tax Foundation study based on Congressional Budget Office data shows that in 2003, the wealthiest 20 percent of income earners paid nearly 80 percent of all income taxes, and nearly 37 percent of income-tax filers pay no tax at all.
Thus, the tax code has become more progressive under President Bush.That may not be my preference, but it should be a point of compromisečsomething for which people who lose elections should be
thankful.
Kerry has also tried to turn the deficit into political gain, but recent data from the Treasury department show tax receipts gaining five percent from last year and a shrinking deficit that is $64 billion less than
Congressional Budget Office estimates had predicted. Lower tax rates are firing the engines of growth and are keeping the deficit to a manageable 3.5 percent of the gross domestic product.
President Bush has pushed for and achieved pro-growth tax policies that make us all better off.John Kerry’s knee-jerk, tax-loving liberalism belongs in the dustbin of history.
- Justin Byma
Posted by msveum at November 2, 2004 11:59 AM
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