History Forum / General / British History / July 2006

OUTSIDE THE BOX

"Rising Tide"

"Tax cuts are good for everyone--and everyone knows it but Washington
Democrats."

BY PETE DU PONT
Tuesday, July 25, 2006

"John F. Kennedy believed that "an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates
will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget, just as it will
never produce enough jobs or enough profits." So he proposed income tax rate
reductions, which the Democratic Congress enacted the year after JFK's
death. Back then, Democrats were for them: more than 80% of Democratic
senators and representatives voted for the Kennedy tax cuts.

But that's NOT the Democrat Party of today, which is frankly Socialist.  --
DSH

My, how times have changed. Today the Democratic Party is so vehemently
opposed to income tax cuts that when President Bush's reached their final
vote in May 2003, only 4% of Democratic legislators (2 of 48 senators and 7
of 205 representatives) voted "yes."

Bingo! -- DSH

Opposing tax cuts has become the mantra of the liberal left.

Indeed it has -- including many loony Left-Wing academics. -- DSH

Sen. John Kerry wants to roll back Bush's "unaffordable tax cuts."  Senator
Mark Dayton (D., Minn.) called the cuts "dangerous and destructive and
dishonorable."  Bill Clinton in 2003 said the cuts were "way too big to
avoid serious harm."  And various New York Times editorials called them
"economically unsound," claimed that "they will increase the deficit by
hundreds of billions of dollars" and said they were unlikely "to stimulate
the wallowing economy."

Earlier this month House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi promised that the
election of a Democratic House in November would result in a "rollback of
the tax cuts."

Yep, that's what the San Francisco Democrat Nancy Pelosi and her loyal
lemmings want.  -- DSH

Of course they have it backwards. President Bush's personal income, capital
gains and dividend tax rate reductions have created economic growth,
significantly increased government tax receipts, and reduced the federal
deficit by nearly $130 billion. As the New York Times was forced to admit in
its front-page headline on July 9, a "Surprising Jump in Tax Revenues Curbs
U.S. Deficit."

But it isn't surprising at all; the truth is that when tax rates go down,
economic activity goes up.

Bingo!  John F. Kennedy understood that. -- DSH

Mr. Bush signed the most recent tax cuts into law in the spring of 2003. In
the past 33 months the size of America's entire economy has increased by
20%--or, as National Review Online's Larry Kudlow put it, "In less than
three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output
add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy."

How about those apples?  -- DSH

In the 2 1/4 years before the 2003 tax cuts, economic growth averaged 1.1%
annually; in the three years since it has averaged 4% per year, and in the
first quarter of this year it was 5.6% on an annualized basis.

Inflation-adjusted per capita GDP has grown 7.8% from 2003 through the first
quarter of this year.

According to the government's establishment survey, in the 36 months since
the tax cuts became law, 5.3 million new jobs have been added to the
economy. According to its employment survey, 288,000 jobs were added in May
and 387,000 in June. The unemployment rate dropped from 6.1% when the bills
were signed to 5.4% at the end of 2004 and 4.6% today, and the rate has gone
down for men, women, blacks and Hispanics. Hourly wage rates for workers are
up 3.9% in the past year, and they increased at an annualized rate of 4.6%
in the second quarter of this year, the highest quarterly rate in nearly 10
years.

Incomes are up too. As Stephen Moore noted in The Wall Street Journal, "the
percentage of Americans earning more than $50,000 a year rose from 40.8% to
44.2%" between 2002 and 2004. As for very wealthy families, the portion of
total income "captured by the richest 1%, 5% and 10% of Americans is lower
today than in the last year of the Clinton administration."

All this has been good news for the government. Federal tax receipts
increased by 15%-- $274 billion--last year and 13%-- $206 billion--in the
first nine months of this fiscal year, which, as the Journal points out,
means the nine-month increases for the past two years represent the highest
growth rates in 25 years. Looking ahead to the end of this fiscal year,
total inflation-adjusted government receipts will likely be 23% above 2003
when the Bush tax cuts were signed into law.

Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% increased capital gains
tax receipts by 79% from 2000 to 2004. Cutting the dividend tax rate by more
than half--from 39.6% to 15%--increased dividend tax receipts by 35% from
2002 to 2004. And corporate tax receipts have nearly tripled since 2003,
reaching $250 billion for the past nine months, 26% higher than the same
period last year.

Tax cuts work, and work well, for individuals, employers and even the
government, which sees its revenues increase dramatically when tax cuts are
enacted and left in place over time.

State governments are coming to the same conclusions. Rhode Island Democrats
came to realize their 9.9% top income tax rate--the third highest in the
nation--was costing the state business and jobs, so they teamed up with
their Republican governor to enact a flat-tax option: pay 7.5% (which phases
down to 5.5% over time,) without deductions, instead of 9.9% with them.

Arizona's Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, signed a 10%
across-the-board income tax rate reduction. Oklahoma has reduced its income
tax rates by 20%, and New Mexico's Democratic governor, Bill Richardson, cut
his state's top rate from 8.2% to 4.9% and its capital gains tax rate in
half. Experience has shown that such reductions will be very good for these
states' economies. In the late 1970s, when Delaware had the nation's highest
personal income tax rate at 19.8% (and also its lowest credit rating and
second highest unemployment rate), it began reducing top tax rates down to
5.95%. Over 20 years income-tax revenues increased in every year but one,
and became 300% greater than they had been.

The other side of the coin is the government spending rate, for it has grown
by more than $800 billion--nearly 50%--during the Bush administration.

Excluding war and homeland security expenditures, it has grown about 7% a
year, and virtually nothing has been done to stem it.

A veto or two by the president would help, and so would some spine in the
Republican House and Senate. A recent National Taxpayers Union Foundation
study found that in 2005 the average Republican House member voted to
increase discretionary spending by $168 billion, close to the average
Democrat's $178 billion. Republicans senators' votes averaged $183 billion
in new spending; Democratic senators $217 billion. Compare these numbers to
the golden days of the Gingrich leadership: In 1997 the average House member
voted to reduce spending by $6 billion while the average senator's increase
was only $4 billion.

So there is still economic work to be done in the White House and Congress.
But President Bush's tax reductions have been the most successful economic
growth and opportunity work of any president in a quarter of a century. To
paraphrase JFK, tax rate reduction is indeed a rising tide that lifts all
individuals to greater opportunity."

"Mr. du Pont, a former governor of Delaware, is chairman of the Dallas-based
National Center for Policy Analysis. His column appears once a month."
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DSH

Lux et Veritas et Libertas