Are tax cuts always good?

This is an older column on how Bush's tax cuts follow a supposed cyclical pattern to Reagan's. I'm not sure I agree with everything the columnist says, but it does beg the question: How can a political party, namely the Bush administration, claim the economy is "better than ever" when the country is in trillions of dollars in debt? Are we not utilizing someone elses money in order to be prosperous? I'd love to hear from any economist, let alone anyone else.

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0530-02.htm

You may recall the last time the feds raised taxes was 1993, when the Democrats gutted up and raised them on the richest people in the country by exactly one vote. Rush Limbaugh and others of his ilk went ballistic over "the biggest tax increase in history," even though it affected no one we know. (All tax increases and cuts are "the biggest in history" because the size of the economy keeps growing.) In 1994, the Republicans took over Congress. That's cause and effect there.

Now Bush breezes in and starts by sending everybody in the country a check for "up to" $300 (that's being done at the insistence of the Democrats, who keep trying to get something for everyone, rather than for large political donors only). This is the Clinton Bonus, what we get for having Clinton and Robert Rubin in for eight years. What do you think the next president's going to face?

Apparently, we're dumb enough to fall for this once every 20 years. Ronald Reagan gave us a nice, shiny new tax cut in '81, and it only cost us $2 trillion in debt.

Back at Bad Government Central, the session was one long hangover from the Bush years. If it didn't cost any money — like the hate crimes bill and keeping kids out of the back of pick-ups — it got done. However, they could not bring themselves to stop executing the mentally retarded. Even with a record-large budget of $114 billion, the state still can't afford the level of services that would get us up to average in anything.

So here's the news bulletin from our parts: Living with the aftermath of Bush is a bad hangover. Some people are smart enough to see it coming. When Ronald Reagan was pushing tax cuts 20 years ago, a Republican voted against him, predicting the cuts would lead to massive deficits. The guy's name was Jim Jeffords.