The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – not my favorite people, but they can do their arithmetic – has put together evaluations of the four remaining GOP candidates’ tax and spending plans. Annoyingly, however, they compare these plans to a so-called “realistic baseline” that assumes, among other things, that all the Bush tax cuts are made permanent. So for all the talk of the urgency of deficit control, the need to cut basic social insurance programs, the CRFB is in effect willing to accept as a fait accompli the biggest, most gratuitous budget-busting action of the past couple of decades.
How to fix this? One way would be a current-law comparison, which would involve allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire. But it also seems to me useful to compare the Republican plans with the Obama administration’s plan, which would at least allow the high-end tax cuts to expire. How does debt under this plan compare with the four Republicans?
Well, here’s debt as a percentage of GDP in 2021 (using the OMB numbers (pdf) for Obama and CRFB for the others):
Yep: as Republicans yell about Obama’s deficits and cry that we’re turning into Greece, Greece I tell you, all of them, all of them, propose making the deficit bigger.
And for what? For reverse Robin-Hoodism, taking from the poor and the middle class to lavish huge tax cuts on the rich.
And I believe that all of them know this, too. It’s pure hypocrisy – and it’s all in the service of class warfare waged on behalf of the top 0.1 or 0.01 percent of the income distribution.
How to fix this? One way would be a current-law comparison, which would involve allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire. But it also seems to me useful to compare the Republican plans with the Obama administration’s plan, which would at least allow the high-end tax cuts to expire. How does debt under this plan compare with the four Republicans?
Well, here’s debt as a percentage of GDP in 2021 (using the OMB numbers (pdf) for Obama and CRFB for the others):
Yep: as Republicans yell about Obama’s deficits and cry that we’re turning into Greece, Greece I tell you, all of them, all of them, propose making the deficit bigger.
And for what? For reverse Robin-Hoodism, taking from the poor and the middle class to lavish huge tax cuts on the rich.
And I believe that all of them know this, too. It’s pure hypocrisy – and it’s all in the service of class warfare waged on behalf of the top 0.1 or 0.01 percent of the income distribution.
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