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Isn't true that a large part of the "tax cut" wasn't really a tax cut but an advance on the child credit? I was watching a show last night and they said that many of the checks mailed out last year were just that and it one of the things making more confusing this tax season. They were saying something like 9 milllion people were asking for extensions this year,and even the IRS doesn't understand everything that was implemented.
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No it is not true. In fact, the changes concerning families with children were a very tiny part of the tax reforms passed by the Bush admin.
I can recap it in its entirety if you'd like. It provided every American with significant reductions. People in lower income brackets benefit the most. That is a mathematical fact. Additionally many other situations were addressed such as college funding which is a major expense for most American families. The reform even created a new 10% bracket which reduces taxation by 33% for working teenagers and college studenst (or any other low wage worker). There's volumes more but I won't bore you with the details.
To say that the the reduction in taxation was long overdue is a grand understatement. A large part of what created the previous surplus was OVERtaxation, despite the fact that the economy grew so fast in the 90's. At the same time our economy ballooned in size during the 90's, government itself also grew at a pace that embarrassed even Congress into passing the reductions. Think about that for a moment.
Bush blew it. Yes, he needed to eat part of the surplus to fund the war on terror. No, he did not need to spend like a drunken lottery winner. Yes, we will pay for it for a long time, as Cougar pointed out.
As I write this the events in Iraq are spriraling out of control. On the news this very morning, military officials stated that they are planning for the contingency of having to retake Baghdad one block at a time. The radical factions in Iraq are uniting against American occupation with a gallery of on-the-ground support
from a variety of other nations, all of which are known enemies of America. We are witnessing the turning of the worm. The people with whom we are forced to deal are maniacs as usual. The difference is that all of the maniacs have committed to working in concert.
It is similar to a police force that is not completely supported by a given neighborhood, trying to drive out an organization of multiple, ruthless, street gangs working in unison. No easy task. The maniacs in Iraq have begun taking hostages. Yesterday they threatened to kill AND MUTILATE an American citizen/hostage.
It is going to get ugly for our troops, our country's image as the proverbial hero/good guy, and especially for Bush and anyone that dares to succeed him. It has now transformed into a situation with no good answers. What will need to be done to stay the course will include far more wholesale killing and this time it won't be nearly as "surgical" in nature. If we negotiate at all, they will deliver more terrorism. If we do not, we will be forced to kill a lot of innocent people in Iraq and elsewhere.
I, for one, have stopped waving the flag for a moment, and opened my eyes to the facts as they are unfolding at this very moment. That is not to say that I no longer support the concept, but instead I see that we've marched our way into a pit of snakes.
As to the economy...it does not like war. It does not like uncertainty. It does not like American foreign policy to be questionable to the point of embarrassment. Most of all it does not like terrorism as a viable, working tactic that produces precisely the results desired around the globe.
If people are regularly murdered at the local convenience store, it will have a profound and long-lasting effect on the "economy" of that store. That the owner has the stones to shoot back at the thugs does not change that at all.
An election question about the economy!
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