Turtles All The Way Down

On Tortoises and Tax Cuts « Commentary Magazine: "The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was once giving a lecture in which he stated the earth circled the sun, held in the grip of gravity. He was interrupted by an elderly woman in the audience who told him that was nonsense, and the earth rode on the back of a giant tortoise.

“What does the tortoise stand on?” Russell asked.

“Very clever, young man,” she retorted, ”very clever indeed. But it’s turtles all the way down.”

When it comes to explaining the current fiscal difficulties facing the country, for liberals and their principal mouthpiece, the New York Times editorial page, it’s the Bush tax cuts all the way down. Take this morning’s editorial on the negotiations over the debt ceiling, in which the Times writes, “It is already clear that the Republicans have succeeded spectacularly in their insistence that the agreement be mostly about spending cuts rather than building back the money lost from the Bush tax cuts that was the principal cause of the deficit.”

While I despair, as I’m sure Bertrand Russell did in dealing with the elderly woman, of enlightening the Times with mere facts and logic, let us look at the numbers. In 2003, when the Bush tax cuts became fully operational, federal revenues were $1.782 trillion and the deficit was $377 billion. Unemployment was 6.1 percent. Four years later, federal revenues were $2.568 trillion, 44 percent higher than when the Bush tax cuts kicked in; the deficit was $162 billion, 59.3 percent lower than before the tax cuts; and the unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, 27 percent lower than four years earlier."

Of course there was the little matter of the Fed goosing the economy as usual combined with "Reckless Endangerment" but that's another set of topics -- including the one about how even if you did get more revenue from rescinding the Bush tax cuts it wouldn't be more than 5-10% each year of this year's deficit. Ugghh...

And yes, I'm reading "Reckless Endangerment" and you should too. Unless the book takes a serious left turn, I am mystified how Bill Moyers could have possibly endorsed it. My guess is that he didn't actually read it and just assumed it was more "Bush Bad, Bad, Bad Bush" since it's written by a NYeT reporter. Yes, I know: stopped clock watch again.

Anyway, I'll let you know if it goes bad but I'm amazed so far at what an indictment of Fannie and the Washington pols (bipartisan but with a heavy Dem skew if you pay attention) it is.