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As Candidates Warm to Bush Tax Cuts, Economists Warn of Long-Term Effect
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Mar 28, 2008 01:14pm |
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| Category | Analysis |
| Media | Newspaper - Washington Post |
| News Date | Friday, March 28, 2008 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | When President Bush pushed big tax breaks through Congress in 2001 and 2003, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) joined Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and other Democrats in opposing them as fiscally reckless. But now that McCain and Clinton are running for president, neither is looking to get rid of the cuts. Instead, they are arguing over which ones to keep.
The same is true of Clinton's rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), who recently blamed the Bush tax cuts for driving the nation toward recession. But he, too, wants to preserve about half the cuts, and pile on new ones.
The direction of the tax debate is frustrating deficit hawks in Washington, who worry that none of the candidates is charting a course toward a balanced budget. Meanwhile, Bush and other politicians are telling voters alarmed by a sagging economy that keeping the cuts past their 2010 expiration date can help revive the nation's fortunes, a claim many economists say is nonsense.
Far from acting as an economic tonic, the tax cuts "are neither sustainable nor beneficial" without massive cuts in government spending far beyond what Bush or any candidate to succeed him has proposed, said Alan D. Viard, a former economist in the Bush White House who is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The most popular cuts -- those known as "middle-class" tax cuts -- are more likely to slow economic growth than promote it, Viard and others said. |
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