Top-post countdown No. 5: Bush tax cuts vs. Obama health care
April 28, 2010Jon Brooks Comments Off-
5. Bush tax cuts vs. Obama health care – chart showing the relative impact on the budget of the two Bush tax cuts vs. the Obama health care plan (Mar 4, 2010)
Original post:
From a recent post titled “What Are These Three Numbers” on the economics blog Econbrowser comes this chart:
These numbers, represented in billions of 2010 dollars, were taken from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
As you can see, the two tax cuts increased the deficit about $1.8 trillion dollars, while the proposed health care bill will actually modestly decrease the deficit. As one of the main anti-health care bill criticisms is its cost, this is a potentially effective talking point. (Plus, both of the tax cut bills passed via the reconciliation process, the proposed path to passage for the health care bill and the subject of a major to-do between the two political parties.)
But not everyone is buying the argument. Two responses to the post on the site:
You betray your agenda in that you are using statistics to lie.
These are not even remotely similar and your facile comparision is misleading. You juxtapose two laws that are mostly tax cuts (which allow people to keep more of what they earn) with a tax increase and spending bill.
Yes, I will stipulate that the Republicans were irresponsible by cutting taxes without also cutting spending, but they were at least starting from a position of small surpluses. It isn’t immoral to return some of that income to those that produced it.
The CBO score for the (health care bill) is also horribly misleading. It omits the “doctor fix” and is frontloaded with deficit reduction before the expanded benefits kick in. Tax increases start immediately and ramp up ahead of outlays until they take the lead in 2016.
In addition, I find it hard to take the cost estimates from 2015-2019 at face value. Every single expansion of government involvement in health care has ended up costing more than the initial estimates. I fail to see why this would be different…
————————————————————————————————————–
This analysis is BS. It basically states that the health care act doesn’t hurt the deficit. However, a lot of the taxes are back end loaded (read, never going to be enacted) and the other taxes to pay for this cover 10 years, to provide services for 4 or 6 years, meaning it takes twice as many taxes per year to cover the costs on an annualized basis, meaning this really is all a bunch of BS and going to result in additional huge deficits. Especially since there are no real cost control measures.
Previous top-post entries:
- 25. Colorado Springs: City of the future? – Anti-tax haven Colorado Springs finds itself in desperate fiscal straits, touching off schadenfreude and defensiveness on the Web.
- 24. Sub-prime the Musical – college student creates series of podcasts on the causes of the credit crisis and, naturally, adds song parodies to illustrate the concepts.
- 23. Friday photo gallery Nov 20, 2009
- 22. The Skyscraper Index – This metric shows that the world’s tallest buildings rise on the eve of economic downturns.
- 22. Chances of passing a health care bill – On March 10, Bush administration economist Keith Hennessey upped the chances of health care’s passage from 10% to 40%.
- 22. Friday photo gallery Oct. 30, 2009
- 21. If persons were treated like corporations – Political cartoon from Kevin Moore’s In Contempt site.
- 20. Rappin’ economics – Rap adaptation of the classic econ textbook “Principles of Economics.”
- 19. Friday photo gallery Oct. 9 2009
- 18. Facebook “likes” by city – 210 million Facebook profiles broken down into which pages users click the “like” button on, organized by city.
- 17. Repaired Things – The blog – collection of pictures of things that have been repaired
- 16. Podcast: Local currency bucks the dollar – cash-strapped communities throughout the U.S. make their own money
- 16. Defriending over health care – Did you defriend anyone on Facebook, or were you defriended, in the midst of the furious health care debate?
- 16. Cards of change – altered business cards uploaded by people who have either been laid off or experienced a change in career situation
- 15. Who are the worst tippers? – Waiters comment on which groups of people are the worst tippers, and no one is spared.
- 14. 100 Motivational Blog Posts for the Unemployed – practical and emotional tips, tools, and resources
- 14. Teabonics – misspellings spotted on Tea Party rally signs
- 13. Facebook connections analyzed – interactive Facebook map with lines drawn between geographical areas that share a lot of friends
- 13. Friday photo gallery Nov 6 2009
- 12. Happy all the time – diary of a McDonald’s Happy Meal purchase, in which the subject of the experiment stays unnaturally fresh for a whole year
- 12. Merry Recession! – Recession-themed Christmas cards
- 11. Living Craigslist – Unemployed college grad travels cross-country using only Craigslist.
- 11. Who’s paying taxes?; Distribution of wealth – charts showing which income levels pay what percentage of taxes in the U.S., and the distribution of net worth and wealth
- 10. The Girl’s Guide to Homelessness – 24-year-old Brianna Karp’s blog about losing her job and falling into homelessness
- 9. Best of Craigslist: Economy version – Craigslist-user nominations of posts that are particularly interesting and humorous also serve as indicators of the rotten economy.
- 8. Pretend Office – Freelancers write pretend email messages about pretend office matters.
- 7. The H&M incident – After a student notices that retailer H&M is dumping unsold garments, a p.r. nightmare for the company unfolds on the web.
- 6. Who are the worst tippers? – another round of waiters commenting on which groups of people they think are the most penurious when it comes to tipping
