The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #119021   Message #2582633
Posted By: pdq
06-Mar-09 - 11:15 AM
Thread Name: BS: Obama Goes For Broke
Subject: RE: BS: Obama Goes For Broke
People seem to like leaving out the Kennedy Tax Cuts...read more here:    http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/323.html

"Tax Cuts and National Income
Contrasting the size of the tax cuts with national income shows that the Kennedy tax cut, representing 1.9 percent of income, was the single largest first-year tax-cut of the post-WW II era. The Reagan tax cuts represented 1.4 percent of income while none of the Bush tax cut even breaks 1 percent of income. The Kennedy tax cuts would only have been surpassed in size by combining all three Bush tax cuts into a single package.

Tax Cuts and Budget Resources
Comparing the size of these tax cuts with the federal budget shows that the Kennedy's tax cuts represented 8.8 percent of the budget. In 1981, Reagan's tax cuts represented 5.3 percent of the budget. Each of Bush's tax cuts are smaller than Reagan's—EGTRRA (3.8 percent), JCWA (2.5 percent) and the 2003 Tax Cut (1.8 percent). When the Bush tax cuts are combined (8.1 percent), they would be larger than Reagan's tax cut, yet smaller than Kennedy's tax cut.

Tax Cuts and Defense Costs
When the Kennedy tax cuts were enacted, defense spending constituted a whopping 42.1 percent of the federal budget. When President Reagan pushed though his tax cuts, the Pentagon consumed 22 percent of the budget. Today, defense spending consumes just 17.1 percent of the budget—25 percentage points below Kennedy's defense spending.

Tax Cuts and Deficits
President Kennedy passed his tax cuts as he ran a deficit equaling 1 percent of national income. In 1981, Reagan cut taxes while running a deficit of 2.8 percent of national income. In contrast, Bush passed the largest of his three tax cuts, EGTRAA, in 2001 with a budget surplus of 1.5 percent of income."