One place where George W. Bush can still get standing ovations is at the University of Texas at Tyler. The university’s president introduced him by saying that Bush was the “most determined, principled, compassionate and successful” president this country has had. Bush then went on to describe how he missed Air Force One and being coddled, and that he avoided picking up his dog’s poop for eight years while he was president. Then he made an admission (emphasis mine).
Bush said he sat in the White House with his economic advisors Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke three weeks into the economic downturn.
He said Bernanke told him, “If you don’t do something significant, you’re likely to see a depression greater than the Great Depression.”
“Depression, no depression,” Bush said. “It wasn’t that hard for me, just so you know. I made the decision to use your money to prevent the collapse from happening.”
That has proven to be a very unpopular decision, but it fell to President Obama to implement Bush’s plan. It also fell to Obama to pass a stimulus bill to partially plug the hole Bush had created by letting the economy come to the point of collapse in the first place. While knowledgeable economists warned that more than a trillion dollars were needed to plug the hole and stop massive layoffs, the Republicans adamantly refused to offer the president any support for a package that consisted of less than $800 billion, of which about a third consisted of tax cuts. When Arlen Specter courageously broke with his party to cast the deciding vote, he knew he was no longer a viable candidate for reelection as a Republican and he switched parties.
The Obama administration did not repeat the practice of the Bush administration of mailing tax rebate checks to everyone so that they would be well aware that they received a tax break. Instead, they followed knowledgeable economists’ advice and spread the tax cuts out through lesser paycheck withholdings. This was done because it is believed that people are more likely to spend the money and spur demand if they receive the money this way than if they get one big check. This was another courageous act. President Obama explains:
In a recent interview, President Obama said that structuring the tax cuts so that a little more money showed up regularly in people’s paychecks “was the right thing to do economically, but politically it meant that nobody knew that they were getting a tax cut.”
“And in fact what ended up happening was six months into it, or nine months into it,” the president said, “people had thought we had raised their taxes instead of cutting their taxes.”
And the result is telling:
In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know.
In fact, the stimulus bill cut taxes for 95% of Americans. The reason they didn’t notice is because state taxes went up in thirty states and there was downward pressure on wages. Those state taxes would have gone up more if not for the president signing a bill in August 2010 that gives an additional $26 billion in aid to states to keep their police officers and teachers employed. Well, either taxes would have went up, or communities would have far fewer police officers and teachers. In truth, as USA Today reported in May, the 2009 tax rates were the lowest since 1950 and the onset of the Korean War.
Federal, state and local income taxes consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.
“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.
This is an interesting fact to keep in mind when considering that the ‘T’, ‘E’, and “A’ in Tea Party stands for ‘Taxed Enough Already.’ The reality is that no one in the work force has ever enjoyed a lower level of overall taxation. Could that maybe explain why we have such big deficits?
We are in an era of misdirected anger. Arlen Specter made a career out of being wishy-washy, but he was run out of office for making a courageous and correct vote. People are mad at the president for raising their taxes when he actually cut them. They blame him for a program initiated by his predecessor from the other party. The noisiest political movement in the country is predicated on the fact that we are being taxed too much, when we’ve never been taxed so little.
It’s nuts. And George W. Bush is getting standing ovations.
Bush spoke Tuesday before a sold-out crowd of 2,000 people during the 76th lecture as part of The University of Texas at Tyler’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
He walked on the stage to a standing ovation. People in the audience were pumping their fists and whistling. One audience member shouted, “Bring back Bush,” at one point during the presentation.
He would receive at least two more standing ovations before the end of his speech.
No one is more to blame for this current madness than Mr. Bush. He weaponized the Stupid and McCain deployed it with Palin.
