Tax Cuts

TAX CUTS

Who doesn’t like tax cuts? Count me in but I just don’t like the rhetoric and hypocrisy. Republicans always run for office on tax cuts and the idea that cutting taxes will stimulate the economy enough to make up for loss of revenues. That works if taxes are truly so high that they are significantly hurting economic growth. Republicans also complain about the deficit and the debt and promise to reduce it. They love to point to the Reagan era when taxes were greatly reduced and the economy increased but oops! The deficit under Reagan increased by 1.4 trillion or a 142% over the previous administration.

No one (including myself) really wants to take on the debt and deficits. People smarter than me say it’s ok for a powerful economy like ours to engage in modest deficit spending and carry some debt. But other smart people say it’s all getting a little out of hand relative to GDP and ultimately threatens our economy and thus our security (how will we buy more bombers if no one will loan us the money?).

If we really cared about the debt/defict we would reduce spending (Democrats go crazy) and keep taxes where they are or increase slightly (Republicans go crazy).

One thing that has always bothered me in this is the unwillingness of both parties to ask Americans to make some financial sacrifices (ask your parents, if they are still around, about sacrifice and  WW 2).  Going back to Desert Storm and moving forward to the second invasion of Iraq and through the war on terrorism, no one has asked us to pay a little more for the cost of being more secure. In fact the cost for much of that activity was not even put in the budget – it was “off the books”.   Shouldn’t we have  had a “war tax” to pay for all that?

Iraq war costs U.S. more than $2 trillion: study. The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said. Washington Post.

The War on Terror is a military campaign launched by the Bush Administration in response to the al-Qaida 9/11 terrorist attacks. The War on Terror includes the Afghanistan War and the War in Iraq. It added $2 trillion to the debt as of the FY 2018 budget. The Balance.