En anden vinkel på Bush´s skattelettelser

George Bush har måttet høre meget for hans skatte-sænkning først i hans første præsident-periode, og hvordan den efter sigende er skyld i det store amerikanske budget-underskud. Kevin Hassett har en interessant vinkel på Bloomberg.com:

Bring back the Clinton administration. Well, maybe not all of it, but at least its spending habits.

While the Bush administration is celebrating the growing economy and pointing to its tax cuts as the reason for last week's news about a smaller budget deficit, there is this one glaring reality: Spending growth under George W. Bush has been almost four times as high as it was during the same period of Bill Clinton's presidency.

No two-term president in post-war U.S. history has ever presided over a spending binge this monumental in his first six years in office.

How could Bush get away with it? Easy. Everybody has been too busy squabbling over the tax cuts. ...

As author Brian Anderson ably documents in his bestselling new book ``South Park Conservatives,'' the major TV networks regularly referred to the tax cuts as ``huge,'' ``very big,'' or ``massive'' as they were introduced.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry centered his presidential campaign on their repeal, and his rhetoric implied that he could deliver the moon and the stars with all of the revenue he would gain by taking back the Bush tax cuts. ...

This is incorrect, and profoundly so. The problem is that both parties have an incentive to misrepresent the tax cuts. The Democrats get to portray Republicans as irresponsible ideologues, and the Republicans get to pretend to deliver big changes to their supply-side base even when they are miniscule. The tax cut I received doesn't feel ``massive.'' Does yours? Let's tune out the chatter for a minute and just do the math. One easy way to gain perspective is to compare the situation before Bush took office with today. ...

The spending story is much different. The 2000 forecast expected that total outlays in 2006 would be $2.1 trillion; now the CBO expects spending to be $2.5 trillion, a ``massive'' miss. And the 2000 forecast underestimates future years by even more, with the spending for 2009 projected to be $535 billion higher than was expected just before Bush took office.

If Bush had vowed when he took office to never spend more than Clinton planned to, then the budget office would be projecting a 10-year surplus of about $3.6 trillion, even assuming that all of the Bush tax cuts are made permanent. ...

Instead, based on Bush's proposed 2006 budget, we are looking at a 10-year deficit of $2.6 trillion. Tax cuts didn't cause the deficit. At best, they approximately paid for themselves. Spending is the true culprit. ...

Even the later forecasts, however, support the view that spending is the main culprit. And homeland security and defense aren't the problem.

Even if we amend the Clinton numbers to allow the homeland security and defense spending surges to occur, the budget would still have a surplus of around $2 trillion with today's revenues. So the tax cuts may have cost a great deal less over time because they stimulated growth. But spending has been so out of control that it has offset the good news on revenue.

The conclusion is obvious: From the education bill to the prescription drug benefit to the war on terror, spending has spun out of control.

Hvad meget få har forstået er, at Bush faktisk har kørt samme taktik som Fogh har i Danmark og Blair i Storbritannien: Hold styr på dit eget bagland samtidig med at du tager modstandernes mærkesager fra dem. Derfor har USA under Bush set massive forbedringer i sundheds- og undervisnings-sektoren, ulandshjælpen er blevet drastisk udvidet osv.

Det er også derfor det demokratiske parti i USA er så hysterisk omkring Rove-sagen og udnævnelsen af FN-ambassadører og højesteretsdommere: Bush har taget samtlige deres mærkesager fra dem.

Problemet er så, at det koster. Meget.

Henrik