Jason Mattera on Bush Tax Cuts And MSNBC

Issue of "Bush Tax Cuts Rises Again With Failure of Super Committee" by Jason Mattera11/22/2011

Comments: By randomly turning on MSNBC at any point throughout the day, you’re guaranteed to see one of the following:

--Chris Matthews’s spittle ricocheting off of the camera;

--Rachel Maddow in a hoodie; or

--Some leftwing politician droning on and on about how the Bush tax cuts must be rescinded… because they weren’t paid for, because they’ve contributed massively to the deficit, because they were for the “rich,” and something about the Koch Brothers and Grover Norquist being a bane upon American democracy.

Indeed, the tax cuts signed into law by President Bush in 2001 and 2003 have taken center stage once again now that the “supercommittee” charged with finding $1.2 trillion in spending cuts admitted failure. The Washington Post wrote that the supercommitte’s undoing has thrust the “much-contested Bush tax cuts into the forefront of next year’s presidential campaign.” As the Post goes on to note, Democrats will “portray Obama’s opponent in the presidential election as a defender of tax cuts for the rich.”

“The wealthiest of Americans, those who earn over a million dollars every year, have to share, too. And that line in the sand we haven’t seen any Republicans willing to cross yet,” said one of the United States Senate’s most uninformed members, Patty Murray (D.-Wash.).

Dan Pfeiffer, official White House hack and Obama bootlicker, said the expiration of the tax cuts “should be a powerful incentive to the Republicans to abandon their politically foolish and substantively absurd position on taxes on the wealthy.”

And the beat goes on.

Except, of course, these shopworn liberal objections to tax cuts are filled with more shinola than Michael Moore’s colon.

Seeing that the Democrats are reviving their favorite campaign talking point, let’s review the facts about “tax cuts for the rich.”

First off, what President Bush enacted into law cut taxes across the board on everyone, not just the upper echelon. The 15 percent rate dropped to 10 percent, 27 percent to 25 percent, 30 percent to 28 percent, 35 percent to 33 percent, and 39.6 percent to 35 percent. Now go ahead and ask a lib which income bracket received the highest cut. Oh, snap: That would be the lowest income threshold, which nosedived five percentage points.

The whole “tax cuts for the rich” is pure bunk, a lie that liberals shamelessly popularize. Not that this should surprise us one bit. Here we have a Democrat Party in America that couldn’t agree on a puny $1.2 trillion in spending reductions over a 10-year-period. That means that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi’s minions refused to slice off what amounts to $120 billion dollars a year of a federal budget nearly topping $4 trillion. Instead they insisted that taxes be jacked up to pay for their statist programs.

Next up, we have the line that tax cuts blew the lid off of our deficit. That’s funny, because during the last year a Republican budget controlled Congress (fiscal year 2007), the deficit stood at a minuscule $161 billion dollars. $161 billion! That’s at least five years into the tenure of those evil tax cuts. Moreover, as HUMAN EVENTS has previously reported, federal tax receipts actually went up while the tax cuts were accelerating. In other words, the United States Treasury received more money not less because of the Bush tax cuts that Democrats allege ruined America’s economy.

See for yourself:

$1.88 trillion in 2004

$ 2.15 trillion in 2005

$ 2.4 trillion in 2006

$ 2.6 trillion in 2007

The last figure was actually the highest dollar amount brought into the Treasury Department… ever. That’s right, folks. While Democrats wail and whine about tax cuts as the main culprit for this country’s deficit woes, it turns out that we were bringing in bagfuls of money at historic proportions during that same time.

Idiots.

Then there are the politically-savvy, but totally fallacious, calls for "shared sacrifice." Naturally the Democrats don’t use that phrase to describe the nearly 50 percent of Americans who don’t pay any federal income taxes, but instead those who already pay the bulk of all federal, state, and local taxes. That aside, it’s the spending side of the lever that is completely out-of-whack, and has been so for a while. We’re now in our third straight year in a row with deficits exploding past $1 trillion dollars.

So when a lib is babbling to you about “shared sacrifice,” you can remind him that his great leader Messiah Obama shattered two spending records: Giving America her first-ever $1 trillion dollar deficit, and number two, extending that history-making deficit three consecutive years.

Heck, this guy has managed to increase the national debt by more than the first 41 presidents combined (George Washington to George Bush), and he’s done so in a mere 32 months.

You go, Barack!

And there you have it, the cutting evidence you need at your finger tips to eviscerate those unending lefty desires to slam us against the locker room and raid our wallets some more. Time to hit these Dems back with what they can’t get around -- a little something, something called: Facts.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Mattera is the editor of HUMAN EVENTS and the author of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation (Simon & Schuster). He also hosts The Jason Mattera Show on News Talk Radio 77WABC. Previously, he was the Spokesman for Young America's Foundation and a TV correspondent for Michelle Malkin. Follow Jason on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.