Retired GOP congressional staffer: Bush tax cuts didn’t create jobs, budget deficits “were Republican in origin.”

Original Link: http://thepoliticalcarnival.net/2011/06/26/retired-gop-congressional-staffer-bush-tax-cuts-didnt-create-jobs-budget-deficits-were-republican-in-origin/

By GottaLaff



Today’s L.A. Times has an op-ed written by Mike Lofgren. Who’s Mike Lofgren, and why should I care, you may be wondering? Why, he’s a retired congressional staffer, I reply. In fact, he’s a Republican. He worked in both the House and Senate Budget Committees.
In his piece, Lofgren the Republican discusses the budget deficit, and explains (as very few do on the Tee Vee Machine) that raising the debt ceiling is not about more spending. It’s about paying back what we already owe, and that we must pay “for past congressional decisions on taxes and spending, and those decisions were made primarily when Republicans were in charge.”
He should know.

He also points out that the GOP, while heaping the blame on Democrats, hasn’t exactly come up with any ideas of their own.

My party talks a good game, railing about the immorality of passing debt on to our children. But the same Congressional Budget Office that punctured Obama’s budget also concluded that the major policies that swung the budget from a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion in 2001 to the present 10-year deficit of $6.2 trillion were Republican in origin. [...]
The Bush tax cuts have added another $3 trillion in red ink. While Republican leaders wail that Americans — particularly their rich contributors — are overtaxed, the facts say otherwise: U.S. taxpayers, particularly the wealthiest, pay far less in taxes than they would in most other developed countries. Today, the 400 wealthiest Americans have as much wealth as the bottom 125 million. The GOP insists that those wealthy people use their money to create jobs, and that taxing them more heavily would ultimately hurt the economy. But, if that’s so, why was the rate of job creation in the decade after the Bush tax cuts the poorest in any decade since before World War II?
Like a drunk swearing off hooch for the hundredth time, Republicans are now trying to show they are serious about controlling the deficit…

That’s right, he just compared the GOP to alcoholics who, like so many addicts, swear they can quit if they want to. You see, they said they were going to quit (control the deficit), but they were just saying it, they really didn’t mean it.

Please read the whole thing here.