Media Endorsements of Presidential Candidates

[Tino]

Annik, what is this Աննիկ <3s Հովիկ? Annik heart Hovik in some exotic language?

It's Armenian. Aren't the letterforms beautiful?

Yes beautiful.

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Paladin,

In other threads you and I have discussed these same issues and I'm not going to retype the answers here, especially since, as usual, you provide no data, just partisan assertions. But I will address your claim about tax cuts not "working." Refer to the Tax Policy Center website at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/...?Docid=200 to see this data for yourself, and note that the revenue figures given are for government fiscal years (October to September) and in constant FY2005 dollars.

You say/imply that the Reagan and/or Bush tax cutting doesn't "work" without saying what "work" means, but I'm going to use "work" as raising revenues.

For FY81-88 (Reagan years) revenues grew from $599 billion to $909 billion. This contradicts your claim that the Reagan tax cuts didn't "work", but don't run off and get salty just yet. Let's look at Clinton.

For FY93-00 (Clinton years) revenues grew from $1154 billion to $2025 billion. You say Clinton raised taxes, and the data shows revenues also went up. Hold this thought. Let's look at Bush W.

For FY01-08 (Bush W years) revenues grew from $1991 billion to $2524 billion. This contradicts your claim that the Bush tax cuts didn't "work", but don't run off yet. What's the conclusion from these three data points? It's that depending on what's going on in the economy, the right solution might be raising taxes or lowering taxes, and properly applied, either approach can raise revenues in the right circumstances.

On the topic of spending and deficits, yes of course more revenue can offset more spending, but we have been historically been successful by keeping our spending below 20% of GDP. Deficits got large under Reagan when Congress let spending get into the 22-23% range. Deficits got small and turned into surpluses under Clinton when Congress controlled spending and got it into the 18-19% range. It doesn't always work, as Congress had spending under 20% during the Bush W. years but still ran large deficits. But spending has now ballooned to 24% of GDP and the deficits are a trillion+ dollars annually. Spending is the thing we can control directly, and cutting our spending back to 20% of GDP (Romney's plan) is a critical part of turning the economy around. With tax cuts across the board now (but with the removal of deductions and loopholes that benefit the wealthy) we'll have an improved environment for investment, which will increase investment in business, creating new businesses, which will need to hire people, which will lower unemployment and create more wage earners who will be paying taxes instead of getting unemployment benefits.