Sorry Balky is not a natural born US citizen so he can't run for Preisdent.

Here is some info http://www.cbpp.org/4-14-04tax-sum.htm

Some highlights from that site, "The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see."

And "he design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II."

Or " The tax cuts would reduce revenues by $276 billion in 2004, according to Joint Committee on Taxation estimates. Further, the interest costs associated with the enacted tax cuts would equal $20 billion, using Congressional Budget Office assumptions. The total cost would therefore be $297 billion, or 2.6 percent of the economy (or GDP). Using these estimates, the cost of the tax cuts account for more than half of the 2004 deficit, which CBO estimates to be $477 billion or 4.2 percent of GDP. Based on these estimates, the deficit would have been 1.6 percent of GDP without the tax cuts."

Seems pretty clear to me.

You don't have to be an economist to figure it out. Bush said that the tax cuts would stimulate the economy thus creating more income and the money coming in from the increased revenue would offset the losses from the tax cuts themselves. That didn't happen. We have had two different recessions under Bush. One in 2001 and the one we are in now. The economy, even at its best has never been all that strong and we are now drowning in debt.

I didn't go to Harvard but I can see if you reduce the amount you bring in, never replace that amount the increase your spending, things didn't work out has you had planned them to.

But Obama has no plans on stopping the war. He is threatening Iran and has said he will go into Pakistan to get Osama. :error

Racist. :)

Newsflash we go to war Iran your taxes are going to raised no matter who is president.You cant fight terrorists and rogue nations on the chinese credit card forever.
Also these people that say obama is going to ruin the economy,hello have you read a news paper lately? lol

Far as i heard, he told that audience that he woudl do whatever is necessary to protect American interests, along with her allies.

Going into Pakistan is one thing, actually finding anyone without being torn to shreds by the locals is something completley different

People dont want to look at this ,they would rather believe the bullshit.

is this a good or bad thing?

Interesting information... but it would be MORE useful if it actually took into account the fact that revenues were ALREADY declining do to the recession that began during the final years of the previous administration + the ripple effects of the 911 attacks.

More over, while you can argue that had those tax cuts NOT been made, the revenue would not have dipped as far as it did. But then how would you explain the record growth in overall tax revenue for the subsequant years?

http://www.factcheck.org/demos/factc...20chart(1).jpg

Im no Harvard graduate either - but that graph tends to show an overall gain of about 19% - and all the while, the US economy is reported to be in the shitter! How is this possible?

Don't get me wrong, I am in NO WAY a Bush supporter for too many reasons to list - but the tax cuts worked and spawned economic growth and DRASTICALLY increased overall federal tax revenue.

The thing you dont like to consider, is how much those extra bucks in the hands of the people actually contributed to the overall good of the economy and the growth of federal taxes. Every time we cut taxes, there is overall revenue growth, go back and look at when Regan & Kennedy did the very same thing.

There is no way he's going to become President anyway so why all the fuss.

It's great. He's always on my nuts trying to pick a fight. I doubt he actually has the willpower to ignore me but I can always hope.

Oh, and 50 Obama fanboys.

I'm an Obama supporter, but this argument is disingenous. As a matter of fact, things like this hurt his cause because you make up arguments instead of just relying on the facts.

You posted how many bills Hillary had passed, and the number Obama authored. Those are two totally different things. How many bills did Obama get passed?
Only one or two come to mind.

The Senate is a body where seniority trumps all, most legislation, and virtually all important legislation, is written and sponsored by the most senior members. A Senator with less than 10 years of service can't be expected to have a long lesislative record to tout. This, however, makes them no less qualified to be President.

Telling us how many bills someone has authored is about as valuable a piece of information as how many myspace comments they've made.

We're Americans. It's what we do. Somehow shaking our impotent little fists at the other side makes us feel better. :1orglaugh

do you have graphs from a real org not fact check a group who is far from nuetral.

This is the best thing said its so true.:thumbsup

You pulled up the same information? That is to say, you just verified over a thousand records in just a few short minutes?

Ehm, yeah. Obviously, that must be true.

Look at this:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=300022
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/person.xpd?id=400629

(Edit: for those who don't get it, this proves the chain email is factually incorrect - the link in the OP does that, too, but it takes a few minutes more)

Since discussing this any further is an exercise in futility, let's round up the discussion and summarize the conclusions:

1. Chain emails on politics are not reliable.
2. Pussyserver is an Obama fanboy.
3. Babaganoosh thinks Obama is a racist based on some dubious reasoning.
4. Symonsinister will put anyone who politically disagrees with him on his ignore list.
5. SBR Richard is either utterly illiterate, a liar, or both.
6. AlienQ, despite his occasional batshit insanity, is capable of making decent arguments.
7. WhiplashDug doesn't have a good grasp of economics.
8. kane does.
9. Brujah makes good points.
10. Libertine is always right.
11. Obama is still a better choice than McCain.

WHoever the President ends up being?????? Is going to be treated like shit no matter what he does.... Because It is going to take a Miracle to fix all the bullshit Bush did. So we will blame the next one for more mistakes.

Actually - the graph was from an article on FACTCHECK talking about how McCain is wrong about the Bush Tax cuts. So, since this graph was used to illustrate how much of an idiot McCain is when it comes to the Economy, I'm gonna step out on a limb here and say that its not overtly skewed in Bush's favor... but thats just me.

There is good and bad to be said about both types of economic policy. Historically the republicans give the cuts to the top earners and businesses in an effort to get them to invest that money back into the economy and create jobs and raise revenue. The democrats tend to think giving the money to the middle class will give them more to spend and they will increase demand which increases production and creates jobs. The reality is that the best answer is probably somewhere in the middle, but you can argue the finer points of this until you are blue in the face and never come up with a definitive answer.

You can argue that the tax cuts did help raise revenue but when you look historically, revenue has almost always grown regardless of tax cuts or no tax cuts. Here are some pretty cool graphs that show historic federal revenue. http://www.marktaw.com/culture_and_m...ionalDebt.html

So sure, tax cuts could have something to do with the revenue gain, but I have to wonder how much of it has come from the fact that the government is dumping 2 billion a week into the economy as it funds the war in Iraq. that money tends to go into the hands of US soldiers and companies that support them and supply the defense department. that money has taxes paid on it and counts and federal revenue. Revenue is up, but deficit spending is at an all time high. If you pay me $1,000 per week and I then pay you a tax of $200 per week you could say I have income of $800 a month, but that $800 a month in income is costing you $4,000 a month to get.

I guess in the end we can only what if it so much. I happen to feel that the tax cuts didn't do everything they were meant to do and there are many outside factors influencing any real gains and others will say just the opposite. I think the only way we would ever know for sure is if the Iraq war never happened, or if the new president keeps them in place and the war ends.

And McCain can? LOL. It took that guy the media shitting on him for mixing up Shiites and Sunnis, and he wants to talk about being able to handle an international world?

McCain cant even walk, much less talk straight, he should call his fact talking the "Straight stutter express"

If there is one thing Obama is capable of, thats talking on the fly.

I don't know where you got your information about factcheck.org but I think they are very independent and unbiased. They're pretty hard on everyone who tries to spin the truth.

I haven't yet found the article with the graph that was posted here, but I think the poster took some things out of context.

For instance in this article
http://www.factcheck.org/askfactchec...in_higher.html

They say
Q: Have tax cuts always resulted in higher tax revenues and more economic growth as many tax cut proponents claim?
A: No. In fact, economists say tax cuts do not spark enough growth to pay for themselves.

The whole tax cut increases revenue or stimulates the economy is a red herring. There is no empirical proof of either argument. It's all just political rhetoric. The tax cut proponents can't prove that the government wouldn't have collected even more revenue if tax rates had remained unchanged, and they can't prove that the economy grew faster than it would have if rates remained unchanged.

These are the people who predicted a massive recession would be caused by Bill Clinton's tax and economic stimulus plan in 1993. We then proceeded to have 8 years of unprecedented prosperity with the lowest peacetime unemployment rate in history.

Go figure.

Bwahahahahahaha. Dude did you actually even read the article your little graph came from?
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/supply-side_spin.html

"Sen. John McCain has said President Bush's tax cuts have increased federal revenues. But revenues would have been even higher without them."

Just goes to show that you can take just about anything out of context and make it say just about anything you want if you try hard enough. Unfortunately this includes data from organizations whose purpose is to un-spin the political rhetoric and give the public the correct data.

You win the reading non-comprehension award for the day.

I read about it here. http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decem...eckorg_st.html

Well that's just one guy's opinion written in a blog.

It's weird how people operate. They love organizations like fack check dot org when they're critical of people they don't like, but as soon as they print something critical about someone they do like they go apeshit and shout about how they're a biased organization.

This goes way beyond politics too. I read a Miami Dolphins fan message board sometimes, because I'm a Miami Dolphins fan. 80%+ of the people who post there base their opinion of sportswriters on how many nice or not nice things they've said about the Dolphins.
It's really weird, award winning journalists like SI's Peter King are vilified because they've written critical things about the Dolphins management or players, while some fan with a blog and no writing skills is quoted as a "solid source".

Read the site for yourself and then decide. You can find someone out there criticizing pretty much any organization that publishes anything. The level of spin in our society has become absolutely ridiculous. :(

6. AlienQ, despite his occasional batshit insanity, is capable of making decent arguments.

Kinda like when the autistic kid starts spitting out the square root of large prime numbers or secret government spy codes...