Quote:
Originally posted by Spanky
Yes to end a recession, you cut taxes and increase spending. Roosevelt kept trying to keep the balance in budget. He increased spending, but in order to pay for it he increased taxes on the rich. Therefore he never pulled us out of the depression. WWII forced the government to increase spending dramatically and it pulled us out of the depression. Bush learned this lesson, and applied it when he got to office in 2000.
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You see no difference between a recession and a depression. There is such a difference.
Hoover tried your approach. FDR's approach was to build buying capacity and employment from the bottom, and to find means to pay for it so that the national fisc was not destroyed in the process.
Bush learned the lesson that tax cuts are desired by his base at any time, and for whatever excuse. Surplus? Cut taxes (don't pay off the debt). Recession? Cut taxes. War? Cut taxes. Polls slipping? Cut taxes. Suggesting that tax cuts were Bush's response to recession is ludicrous -- they were his response to the sunrise.
And I've yet to see any decent argument for why the Bush tax cuts -- rather than the massive infusion of government spending (ah, those bedrock conservative principles) and the lowest interest rates in history for the first five years of his term -- were responsible for what recovery we've had.*
*Once upon a time, Republicans argued that, in fact, federal economic policies had nothing to do with recession or growth -- it was all just the business cycle. Of course, that was when Clinton had been president for five years and the economy was doing better than ever. Go figure.
