Were the 2001 Bush tax cuts more damaging to the United States that the September 11 attacks? Columnist Cesar Avo of Portugal’s Sol newspaper praises billionaire investor Warren Buffet for his assertion that America’s wealthy should give up the Bush tax cuts and pay more – for the good of the nation.
For Portugal’s Sol newspaper, Cesar Avo starts out this way:
In the year that the Twin Towers were wiped off of New York’s landscape, another attack – without the horror or “spectacle” of the first, struck Americans: in June of 2001, George W. Bush announced a series of cuts and exemptions for income and property taxes, dividends, etc. for the wealthiest.
The measure proved to be just as wicked as the Iraq invasion. On top of the moral issues that it raised, the consequences were disastrous. Bill Clinton had left a surplus that was transformed into the current mountain of debt – and this, rather than more than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (which cost $1.7 trillion between 2002 and 2009), was the central cause.
This is the same deficit that Republicans want so badly to fight today, but that keeps Barack Obama hostage to a Congress that won’t allow him to raise taxes.
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