Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s; the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as measured by virtually any public policy metric.
We certainly could have voted on making the middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts for working families permanent had the Republicans not insisted that the only way they would support those tax breaks is if we also added $700 billion to the deficit to give tax breaks to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. That's what was really disturbing.
On GOP Tax Cuts: They'll take food out of the mouths of children to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.
[T]hese tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans are also the tax cuts that are least likely to promote growth.
It's common sense to be for middle-class tax cuts and tax cuts on small businesses, to be for not allowing Medicare to be turned into voucher care.
Liberal Democrats are inexorably opposed to tax cuts, because tax cuts give people more power, and take away from the role of government.
I think that [Barack Obama] does say something that's - that is telling on that score, when he talks about the [George W.] Bush tax cuts and the swap he makes after the midterm elections, which is he doesn't agree with the Bush tax cuts.
You are smart people. You know that the tax cuts have not fueled record revenues. You know what it takes to establish causality. You know that the first order effect of cutting taxes is to lower tax revenues. We all agree that the ultimate reduction in tax revenues can be less than this first order effect, because lower tax rates encourage greater economic activity and thus expand the tax base. No thoughtful person believes that this possible offset more than compensated for the first effect for these tax cuts. Not a single one.
We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.
In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.
His presidency ended more than a decade ago, but politicians, Democrat and Republican, still talk about Ronald Reagan. Al Gore has an ad noting that in Congress he opposed the Reagan budget cuts. He says that because Bill Bradley was one of 36 Democratic Senators who voted for the cuts. Gore doesn’t point out that Bradley also voted against the popular Reagan tax cuts and that it was the tax cuts that piled up those enormous deficits, a snowballing national debt.
Should we freeze or postpone prospective tax cuts and avoid any new tax cuts until we are sure we have the money to pay for the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq.
I wish they weren't called the 'Bush tax cuts.' If they're called some other body's tax cuts, they're probably less likely to be raised.
All my adult life, I have lived with Labour lies about tax cuts. Their cry is always the same. Tax cuts are impossible in a civilised society. They mean less revenue for the state, which means sacked teachers, unemployed doctors, fewer nurses. I am amazed anyone still takes such arrant twaddle seriously.
There are a lot of misconceptions regarding the Bush tax cuts, all of them deliberately propagated by none other than President Obama and his pals. The biggest lie of them all is that these tax cuts will only affect the wealthiest two percent.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Reagan tax cuts turned the deepest recession since the Great Depression into the largest 20-year economic boom in American history. The Reagan tax cuts of 1981 and '86. And the same thing can happen here again. Democrats just cannot let it.