Word: taxingly
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...into the financial system has ended up at banks that are lending it back to the government by buying Treasury securities. Isn't that great? We make money available to the banks at 0%, they lend it to the government at a markup, and they make money off our tax dollars, whining every step...
...know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," Vice President Dick Cheney famously told George W. Bush's first Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill. Cheney, who rarely allows facts to get in the way of a good ideology, was retailing a myth. Ronald Reagan is remembered for the massive tax cuts passed during his first year in office. But since deficits do matter - and since Reagan's so-called supply-side cuts blasted an enormous hole in the budget - the President had to come back in 1982 with the largest peacetime tax increase in American history: the Tax Equity...
...strong defense, and loved having politicians who secured funding for a Yo-Yo Hall of Fame in their district. Deficits grew until the combined actions of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton caused the deficits to stop growing. How, you might ask, did they manage that? They raised taxes. Somehow the economy not only survived, it prospered. (See pictures of tea-party tax protests...
...even successful tax increases are never remembered fondly. Cheney's mythology has prevailed. The rosy fantasy of Reagan's tax-cutting has been coupled with the dread toll of Democrats - from Walter Mondale to John Kerry - who got clobbered for hinting that they might want to, uh, raise revenues. An antitax fetishism has overwhelmed both parties. Along the way, despite the melodramatic rhetoric, the actual rate of federal taxation has wobbled a bit, from a high of 20.9% of GDP in 2000 to a recession-driven low of 17.7% last year, but averages out to just under 19% from...
...does this matter now? Because we are in the midst of a debate over how to fund a health-care-reform plan - and the idea of raising taxes, even just a little bit, to pay for it is causing heart failure among our legislators. They are looking for somewhere between $30 billion and $35 billion per year. If the bill isn't properly funded - if working-class families don't receive large enough tax credits to help pay for their newly mandated health insurance, if they're forced to pay thousands of dollars in new out-of-pocket expenses - Republicans...