December 8, 2005
IT'S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS...:
House Passes 3 Tax Cuts, Plans a 4th: Cost Would Outstrip Recent Action on Deficit (Jonathan Weisman, December 8, 2005, Washington Post)
The House passed three separate tax cuts yesterday and plans to approve a fourth today, trimming the federal revenue by $94.5 billion over five years -- nearly double the budget savings that Republicans muscled through the House last month.GOP leaders portray the tax bills -- for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast, affluent investors, U.S. troops serving in Iraq and taxpayers who otherwise would be hit by the alternative minimum tax -- as vital to keeping the economy rolling. [...]
But some budget analysts say the flourish of tax cutting badly undermines the recent shows of fiscal discipline. Last month's budget-cutting bill would save $50 billion over five years by imposing new fees on Medicaid recipients, trimming the food stamp rolls, squeezing student lenders and cutting federal child support enforcement.
Just keep cutting and then you can seek balance at a lower level.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 8, 2005 12:39 PM
Never get through the Senate so it doesn't matter except as fodder for '06.
Posted by: AWW at December 8, 2005 1:07 PMRush did an amusing riff we heard in the car yesterday. He was explaining that after Katrina, heating oil prices were thirty or forty percent higher than they are now, ergo people's heating costs this winter will be cut by thirty or forty percent.
Makes perfect sense, afterall, he was using the same logic as the Dems use when they claim cuts in programs when only the rate of increase was cut.
Posted by: erp at December 8, 2005 1:45 PM