I did NOT get to watch Bush's speech.

I DID get to watch the dem's response.

My question is....In the opinions of those on this forum, WILL this ONLY help the 1% of the wealthy like the dems said?

What Bout ME? We arent rich, but we certainly dont qualify for food stamp assistance either.

Could you please offer up your views and enlighten me.?

Thanks to ALL.

-- sumer (Shh@aol.con), February 28, 2001

Answers

Let's see now, the facts are that Bush's plan leaves the proportions of taxes paid by the different income groups roughly the same (the "rich" would pay just a fraction of a percentage more actually), but the dems complain that the "rich" would make out in actual dollars. But to make that equivalent you would either have to pay the poor beyond what they actually pay in taxes, or provide no tax relief at all to income groups above about $50K a year. Since income groups beyond the $50K figure pay the vast bulk of the total dollars in taxes paid. This crap about a muffler-versus-lexus works for idiots though that have problems with mathematics (no wonder they are poor).

-- dems are not happy with tax cuts (moreinterpretation@ugly.com), February 28, 2001.

I think the Dems are right insofar as the cuts should be tailored to giving relief to the non-rich (you and me). The Republicans will say this is class warfare. I believe that the class warfare argument as used at times in the past really did have validity, but not in this case.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), February 28, 2001.

From REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT ON TAX CUT PROPOSAL:

Here's how my tax relief plan will work. We will simplify our tax code, reducing today's five brackets to four lower ones: ten percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, and 33 percent. Families with children will also receive a tax credit of $1,000 per child. We will end the death tax, reduce the marriage penalty, and expand tax incentives for charitable giving.

My plan is directed toward individuals and small businesses. It offers relief for everyone who pays income taxes, and it keeps our national commitments to Social Security and debt reduction. These are the details. But it is the results that will matter most. If we pass this tax relief plan in a timely manner, three important things will happen: First, we will return $1,600 to the typical American family with two children. Working families earning between $35,000 and $75,000 will keep anywhere from $600 to $3,000 more each year.

I might see another $5-$10 per week in my pay packet five years from now. What the hell. It's an hour or two of pool table time. I'll take it, but not at the expense of running up a deficit like Reagan did. We shall see. His remark above: "My plan is directed toward individuals and small businesses" is pure BS.

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), February 28, 2001.

Ooops. That last paragraph is mine. Sorry.

-- Rich (howe9@shentel.net), February 28, 2001.

I'm more concerned with the fact that it's based on ten year budget protections.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), February 28, 2001.

Hi Sumer!

I fell asleep on the couch and didn't hear all of his speech. But I'll add my nickel's worth: don't expect any tax cuts to do more than save us little folks a whooping $72.00 - $101.00, if that. What needs to be done is to CUT ENTITLEMENTS. Unpopular, but it's that simple. Until that happens, Sumer, you and I will be supporting the American Way, which is starting to annoy me to no end. I could've purchased another house outright for what I've had to pay the gov't over the last 17 years.

And, no, I'll tell you in advance that I'm not responding to any tax spammer. I have too much to lose to play games with the IRS.

-- (kb8um8@yahoo.com), February 28, 2001.

KB: I'd never fuc$$$ with the IRS either. Too afraid.

You know, we paid well over $10,000 in tax this year alone, with 1 child!!!

I dont know if that is what is happening to others in my place, but I'll tell you what, we STILL owed!!

I work part-time as alot of you know. I'm wondering IF I should just quit.? Can I afford to? Yes, IF I get budget in my vocabulary :-)

Please others, join in okay, this is very enlightening.

Rich: Thanks guy I was leaning toward the dem's opinion's but having NOT heard and having basically no clue, I do appreciate EVERYONE's responses.

thanks again and keep posting :=)

sumer

-- sumer (shhh@aol.con), February 28, 2001.

The president has no authority to take your money in the first place, so, he has no authority to give it back.

He's pissing on your leg, and telling you it is raining.

Please piss on my leg again, Mr president; it needs warming.

kb8, what makes you think anyone thinks you're important enough to argue with?

-- KoFE (your@town.USSA), February 28, 2001.

Consumer:

I didn't see the T.V. telecast of this, but I've read a lot about the tax cut [from both sides.] I guess three things bother me about this, but I can't get whipped up about any of the three until I see the final bill.

1) We were supposed to have this huge surplus, but the Justice Department budget has been cut by 1 billion [to help pay for the tax cut], and several other Department budgets have been cut to help pay for the tax cut. If the money was just laying around, why are all these budget cuts necessary?

2) When Bush was Governor here in Texas, he pushed through a tax cut in 1997. After he left, the legislature met again [They only meet once every two years], and there's not enough money to support a two- year budget. It turns out that the monies used for the tax cut [purported to be a surplus at the time] was gained by cutting programs from 12 months to 10 months. Fuzzy math at its finest, I suppose, but we may just be getting a tax INCREASE because expenses have risen and there's not enough money to pay for it all. I suspect Tarzan had that thought in mind when he mentioned looking ahead 10 years and projecting.

3) The alternative tax isn't on the slate to be "adjusted." [As I said, I won't get whipped up about this until the final bill is presented, but if the alternative tax isn't adjusted, folks COULD pay MORE, despite a tax cut.] If you've never heard of the alternative tax, join the club. Here's a link to the alternative tax.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), February 28, 2001.

Consumer:

I just found this article in my mailbox. Again, it's nothing to get "whipped up" about, as it's just a commentary on what Bush is presenting, and doesn't AT ALL reflect what the final bill might look like.

On Debt and Taxes

Paul Krugman in the New York Times, February 28, 2001

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/28/opinion/28KRUG.html

You 're a middle-aged couple, at the peak of your earning power. You are saving in preparation for your retirement, a little more than 10 years from now. You consider paying off your mortgage early. But the bank informs you that you would face prepayment penalties. Do you (a) stick with your plan to prepare for retirement, but buy stocks and bonds instead of paying off your mortgage, or (b) say, "Oh, in that case let's forget about the future and take an expensive vacation"?

George W. Bush would apparently answer (b). For that is the essence of his latest argument for his tax cut.

Right now the federal government is running a large budget surplus; but most of that surplus comes from Social Security and Medicare, programs that rely on payroll taxes to pay benefits to retirees. Those programs must run surpluses now, while the baby boomers are still paying into them, if they are to avoid either sharp tax increases or sharp benefit cuts when the boomers retire. Both programs are, in other words, pretty much in the position of that middle-aged couple a decade or so from retirement.

Mr. Bush likes to declare that a surplus means that the government is collecting too much in taxes. But it means no such thing if the surplus is mainly a matter of preparing for the fiscal consequences of an aging population. And it is. Nonetheless, Mr. Bush's advisers continue to search for reasons that doing the responsible thing is actually a bad idea.

True, Mr. Bush insists that he will not raid the Social Security surplus. But he has conspicuously refused to make the same promise for Medicare —and has also refused to consider proposals that would make future tax cuts contingent on actual surpluses, instead of locking them in on the basis of highly questionable projections. Why? Because if you make realistic estimates both of future spending and of the costs of Mr. Bush's proposed tax cut (which will end up being at least $2 trillion, and probably considerably more), it becomes clear that he will use up all of the Medicare surplus and make a substantial dent in the Social Security surplus too.

Oh, and Mr. Bush also proposes to divert about $600 billion of Social Security taxes into new personal accounts for younger workers. This further reduces the funds available to pay for the retirement of today's middle-aged workers.

Let's not forget that Texas is now in serious fiscal difficulty thanks to the tax cut Mr. Bush pushed through as governor —a cut that he helped sell with tricky accounting, including a supposed two-year Medicaid package that was actually only budgeted for 23 months.

All this is old hat. What's new is Mr. Bush's latest argument —that since about a third of the federal government's debt is in effect subject to early repayment penalties similar to those associated with some mortgages, it would actually be irresponsible to run a surplus large enough to pay off the national debt.

Now he's right that this may be an argument against repaying that part of the debt. But to say that it justifies dissipating the surplus in tax cuts is exactly like saying that the couple we started with, frustrated in their plan to pay off their mortgage, should give up on planning for retirement.

The responsible thing, for both the couple and the federal government, is not to give up on planning for the future; it is to make alternative investments. And if this means that the Social Security and Medicare trust funds must buy stocks and bonds from the private sector, so be it.

Some people —including, alas, Alan Greenspan —have made it seem as if any purchase of private-sector assets by the trust funds would instantly politicize the financial markets and undermine the foundations of the free-enterprise system. But that's ideology, not analysis; people who have looked seriously at the issue think that these concerns are vastly overblown. There are well-established techniques for protecting government investment accounts from political meddling, such as legal requirements that the funds buy a broad index. Are these techniques imperfect? Maybe —but who would argue that rather than running some slight risks of politicizing the markets, we should squander the money that was supposed to pay for our retirement?

Only a politician with an irresponsible tax cut to sell.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), February 28, 2001.

Thanks Anita. I was wondering about the Social Security I sat in a CE course for my insurance license approximately 6 years ago and THEN they were saying something HAS to be done immediately and that people my age will most likely NOT have SS IF nothing is done.

so far, nothing has been done, It scares me. I do get pissed that I and my husband are paying out the bunghole for SS and I do believe we wont have any.

We have invested in IRA here at my job and hubby is socking away at his 401K, but still, it most likely wont be enough.

I always heard repubs were for the wealthy, never knew IF it were true or not. Although I did not like Clintons actions in office, I still, like most, enjoyed the good times :-)

Moral of story, what goes up, must come down :-(

Anyone else? So far I'm leaning toward the fact that this tax cut is a CUT alright but not a good thing.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), February 28, 2001.

We were supposed to have this huge surplus, but the Justice Department budget has been cut by 1 billion [to help pay for the tax cut], and several other Department budgets have been cut to help pay for the tax cut.

Anita- If last year your program/dept budget was given an increase of 10% but this year it was only given an 8% increase, which of the following statements would be more accurate?...

A) Your budget was increased, but by a lesser amount than it had been increased in the past.

(or)

B) Your budget was "cut"

Do you see the difference? *Can* you see the difference?

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), February 28, 2001.

Not too deeply hidden in any analysis like Krugman's is the assumption that the economy is a fixed size. Because of this, taxes are regarded as a zero-sum game -- if taxes people pay are reduced by a trillion dollars, then the sum the government collects must necessarily be reduced by a trillion dollars. This sounds almost tautological.

These same people can talk about reducing taxes to stimulate the economy, and sound very convincing when they speak of the danger of overheating the economy, risking inflation. You would *think* they'd notice that if the entire economy is expanding, then government tax *revenues* can and do increase even when tax *rates* go down. A smaller slice of a bigger pie can be larger in absolute terms than a larger slice of a smaller pie, and all that. But as soon as they're done talking about economic booms and busts, they go right back to the fixed-size assumption as though it were locked in a mental compartment unconnected to the rest of their economic understanding.

Bush isn't proposing a tax cut so as to make a nation of simpletons happier with their paychecks, so much as he's proposing it to turn around the current economic downturn. The projected surplus itself assumes that lowered taxes will stimulate the economy, which will in turn pay more in absolute dollars.

Krugman also recommends that rather than cutting taxes (*because* this will reduce government revenues, remember, forget about economic recovery) we stick the money into the "prime earning years" prudent savings toward social security, knowing we'll need it later.

This sounds great on paper, but Krugman seems to be forgetting that we've been running about a $50 billion yearly social security surplus for over a decade, and haven't saved a penny of it. The social security system's nest egg consists of a couple of trillion in IOU's from the general fund, which can never be repaid. Why does Krugman think that politicians won't find some way to spend an even LARGER surplus if they have it? If politicians really had the will power not to spend what they aren't collecting, and not to borrow what they can't repay to spend even more, we'd have no national debt today.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), February 28, 2001.

CD: LOL. Yes...I *CAN* see the difference. However, I've not seen any evidence that reducing percentages of budget increases are what are described as "cuts". The complete budget will be published in April. I will then compare the budgets to the previous years. In addition, I'm not even suggesting that cut budgets are a bad thing. I just found it ironic that several agencies were reported as having their budgets cut [specifically to provide the monies for the tax cut.] THAT'S what drew my attention.

Flint: Regarding Krugman's commentary, there's SO MUCH MORE to consider that he didn't. It's my understanding that the proposed budget considers increases in expenses of 4-4.5%. Just looking at the increase in my mom's assisted living rent, it went up AGAIN 5- 5.5%. Who knows how much a hammer or toilet seat may increase in price before the 2003 budget goes in place. In addition, how can one establish a 10-year plan when the longest one can hold office is 8 years?

There's a great deal to consider in long-range forecasting. I learned quickly that "worst case scenarios" must be included when my mom and dad needed assisted living care. Who woulda thunk that he would be taken so quickly by cancer? Who knew that his pension payment would terminate on his death. Who knew that mom would fall so many times and require additional monies spent on help in addition to her rent? Who knew that she would outlive everyone in her family? My original projections of 18 years quickly collapsed into something like 10.

I guess I liken the tax cut to my mom giving family checks on birthdays, Christmas, etc. It seemed like she had enough money to do that at one time, but circumstances changed and she can't get that money back.

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), March 01, 2001.

Anita-

I'm glad to hear that you can readily see the difference. Their are a number of politicians who are going to be counting on J Q Public not being able to notice...

I've not seen any evidence that reducing percentages of budget increases are what are described as "cuts". The complete budget will be published in April. I will then compare the budgets to the previous years. In addition, I'm not even suggesting that cut budgets are a bad thing. I just found it ironic that several agencies were reported as having their budgets cut

I think you'll find it interesting if you pay attention to the use of the word "cut" during the upcoming budget debate. I can guarantee that you'll be hearing opponents of the proposed budget regularly tossing this "buzzword" around in a manner which would imply (incorrectly) that a specific program/Dept will actually have *less* money available than in the previous year. It's a well-used ploy to garner sympathy for their position. Intentionally misleading and downright sleazy in my opinion.

As I said before, I think you'll find it interesting if you watch for it. If/when you compare an alleged "cut" to the previous budget and find one of these instances, I'd appreciate it if you'd give me a heads-up. Thanks

-- CD (costavike@hotmail.com), March 01, 2001.