Here's a most excellent article that pertains to the discussion at hand.....
Bush Tax Cuts Had Little Positive Impact on the Economy - TheFiscalTimes.com
"Republicans are heavily invested in permanently extending the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration, all of which expire at the end of this year exactly as the legislation was written in the first place. To hear Republicans, one would think that the Bush tax cuts were the most powerful stimulus to growth ever enacted and only a madman would even think of allowing any of them to expire.
The truth is that there is virtually no evidence in support of the Bush tax cuts as an economic elixir. To the extent that they had any positive effect on growth, it was very, very modest. Their main effect was simply to reduce the government’s revenue, thereby increasing the budget deficit, which all Republicans claim to abhor.
It’s worth remembering where the Bush tax cuts came from in the first place. In 1999, in the midst of one of the biggest economic booms in American history, then Texas Gov. Bush convened a group of Republican economists to draft a tax plan for him. Contrary to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut, which was a simple across-the-board marginal tax rate reduction, the Bush plan was a hodge-podge of tax gimmicks designed more to win the support of various voting blocs than stimulate growth....snip
No Reaganites praised the Bush plan; all favored something much bolder, such as the flat tax proposal that was being promoted by publisher Steve Forbes, who was challenging Bush for the Republican nomination. Rather than defend his proposal as one that would increase growth,
Bush argued that its main purpose was simply to deplete the budget surplus, which had grown under President Bill Clinton to $126 billion in 1999. Surpluses were dangerous, Bush and his advisers repeatedly warned, because Congress might spend them.....snip
It’s hard even to find Republican economists who will defend Bush’s policies. Summing up the Bush years, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in Bush’s first term, had this to say in an interview with the Washington Post at the end of the Bush administration:
The expansion was a continuation of the way the U.S. has grown for too long, which was a consumer-led expansion that was heavily concentrated in housing. There was very little of the kind of saving and export-led growth that would be more sustainable. For a group that claims it wants to be judged by history, there is no evidence on the economic policy front that that was the view. It was all Band-Aids.
Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson, who is highly respected by supply-siders, put it more succinctly. When asked by The New York Times last year to name some positive aspects of Bush’s economic policies, he replied, “I don’t see any redeeming features, unfortunately.”...read
Bush's economic policy was considered a failure even by his own economic advisors, and now Republicans want to do a repeat. God help us.
