http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/12/06/why-america-is-going-to-miss-the-bush-tax-cuts/
President Bush and his Congressional Republican majorities at the time cut taxes for everyone in the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Indeed, they cut more for lower and middle income taxpayers than they did for âthe rich,â as Obama calls the nationâs job creators, investors, and successful small businesses. The top tax rate was cut by only 13%, while the lowest rate was cut by one-third, 33%.
According to official IRS data, the top 1% of income earners paid $84 billion more in federal income taxes in 2007 than in 2000 before the Bush tax cuts were passed, 23% more. The share of total federal income taxes paid by the top 1% rose from 37% in 2000, before the Bush tax cuts, to 40% in 2007, after the tax cuts.
In contrast, the bottom half of income earners paid $6 billion less in federal income taxes in 2007 than in 2000, a decline of 16%. The share of federal income taxes paid by the bottom 50% declined from 3.9% in 2000 to 2.9% in 2007.
The Bush tax cuts also included a doubling of the child tax credit from $500 per child to $1,000 per child. Because of that, and the 33% cut in the bottom tax rate, nearly 8 million more people dropped off the federal income tax rolls entirely, paying zero federal income taxes. Indeed, under the Bush tax cuts, the bottom 40% of all income earners not only paid no federal income taxes, as a group on net. By 2009, they were being paid cash by the IRS equal to 10% of all federal income taxes.
These Bush tax cuts did not explode the deficit, as Obama and his echo chamber have alleged. By 2007, the deficit was down to $160 billion, less than 15% of Obamaâs deficits today. Total federal revenues soared from $793.7 billion in 2003, when the last of the Bush tax cuts were enacted, to $1.16 trillion in 2007, a 47% increase. Capital gains revenues had doubled by 2005, despite the 25% capital gains rate cut adopted in 2003. Federal revenues rose to 18.5% of GDP by 2007, above the long term, postwar, historical average over the prior 60 years. CBO was projecting surpluses to return indefinitely in 2012 through the end of its projection period in 2018.
Bush did increase federal spending as a percent of GDP by one-seventh, erasing the federal spending cuts enacted by the Republican Congressional majorities in the 1990s. But even with that, deficits during the Bush years averaged just 2% of GDP, one-third less than the average over the prior 50 years. President Obamaâs deficits have averaged 5 times as much, at 9.1% of GDP.
The proof is in the pudding over the Bush tax cuts. They were followed by a record 52 straight months of job creation, producing 8 million new jobs, with the unemployment rate falling to 4.4%. Business investment spending, which had declined for 9 straight quarters, reversed and increased 6.7% per quarter, producing all those new jobs.
Because of that increased investment, labor productivity soared by 2.5% annually from 2003 to 2007, higher than the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. As a result, real after tax income per capita increased by more than 11%.
Manufacturing output soared to its highest level in 20 years. The stock market revived, creating almost $7 trillion in new shareholder wealth. From 2003 to 2007, the S&P 500 almost doubled. After the Bush tax cuts started in 2001, quickly ending the 2001 recession, the economy continued to grow for another 73 months. From 2000 to 2007, real GDP grew by more than 17%, meaning an additional $2.1 trillion for the American people.
This was mostly the opposite of what President Obama has produced, with his neo-Marxist Obamanomics, particularly unemployment more than twice as high, declining middle class incomes, soaring poverty, weak job growth, stagnant stock market values, collapsing business investment, and negligible growth in GDP.
Of course, the Bush tax cut boom was ended by the 2008 financial crisis. But as discussed in many previous columns, that was caused by the excessive overregulation of President Clintonâs home ownership promotion policies, creating the subprime mortgage market and the housing bubble, and by President Bushâs cheap dollar monetary policies. Obamaâs foolish argument that the Bush tax cuts caused the 2008-2009 recession is so dishonest that abusive propaganda alone should disqualify him from office.
Obamaâs gleeful termination of the Bush tax cuts will produce just the opposite results of those tax cuts. The combination of all the tax rate increases, along with Obamaâs abusive overregulation, and the Fedâs continued mischief, will throw the economy back into recession next year. Unemployment will soar back into double digits, breaking the post depression record of 10.8%. The deficit will soar to over $2 trillion, setting new all time world records. The national debt as a percent of GDP will gallop past Greece.
Middle class incomes will plummet further. Poverty will soar to new all time records.
We canât afford the Bush tax cuts, as Obama says? We canât afford to terminate them. Over the past 45 years, every time the capital gains tax rate has been increased, capital gains revenues have declined rather than increased.
