• $14,374,330,000,000 Total Increase in Household Wealth Since April 2003
• $5,700,000,000,000 Total Increase in Shareholder Wealth Since May 20, 2003
• $863,654,000,000 Total Amount of Tax Cuts Enacted Since Fiscal Year 2003
• $783,890,000,000 Total Amount of Additional Tax Cuts to be Returned to Taxpayers Through 2010
• $625,000,000,000 Total Increase in Federal Tax Revenues Since FY 2003
• $207,788,000,000 Reduction in the Deficit in the Past 29 Months Due to Stronger Economic Growth
• $98,600,000,000 Combined Income Gains for Shareholders From Dividend Increases & Tax Savings 03-05
• $62,000,000,000 Surplus of Capital Gains Tax Revenue Not Accounted For By Revenue Estimators
• $60,000,000,000 Deficit REDUCTION Since the Tax Cut Was Signed Into Law
• 300,001,643 Total Number of Americans benefiting from President Bush’s Tax Cut
• 91,000,000 Number of Individuals Owning Shares of Stock in America
• 23,000,000 Number of Small Businesses Benefiting from Income Tax Reductions
• 6,600,000 Number of Jobs Created Since the Tax Cut Was Signed Into Law
• 12,000 The Magic Number of the Dow Jones Industrial Index is an Arms Length Away
• $2,092 Tax Increase for a Family of Four With $50k of Income if Tax Cuts Are Repealed
• 200 Number of House Members Who Voted Against This Growth Generating Tax Cut
• 50 Number of US Senators Who Voted Against This Growth Generating Tax Cut
• 25 Number of Years Dividend Paying Companies Declined Prior to the 2003 Tax Cut
• 164.0% % Increase in the Dividend Tax Rate if the Income and Dividend Tax Cuts Expire
• 123.0% % Increase in Dividend Income and Share Repurchases Since 2003 Tax Cut
• 91.0% % Increase of Stock Ownership in the Bottom Quintile of Income Distribution Since 1995
• 74.0% % Increase in S&P 500 Companies Boosting Their Dividend Since 2002
• 65.0% % of Voters Who Were Investors in the 2004 Elections
• 51.2% % of Total Tax Cut “Cost” That Has Been Recouped From Higher Levels of Growth
• 14.0% % Margin of Victory for Republicans From Investor Voters in 2002 Elections
• 4.6% Unemployment Rate Which Continues To Disprove the Constant Economic Pessimism
• 3.7% % Average Quarterly GDP Growth Since Tax Cut Was Enacted (long run average is 3.3%)
  
   

Quotable

“As religious readers of Paul Krugman (the New York Times columnist), we had expected the Bush tax cuts to be an unmitigated disaster. Because of President Bush’s “fiscal recklessness” we thought, in 2003, that the US would stay in a recession.

“Then we felt that the recovery would be a profitless recovery. When the profits hit record highs, we then feared that the recovery would be jobless. When the US economy ended up creating more jobs than anyone had thought possible, we fell back on our default position, namely that the Bush tax cuts had endangered the US fiscal position and that we were set to leave mountains of debt to grand-kids etc… (at least the US, unlike Japan or ever larger parts of Europe, has grand-kids to leave debt to!).

“And today, here we are, with our back against the wall as tax receipts in the US are absolutely booming. Maybe, instead of reading Mr Krugman, we should have remembered what Milton Friedman once told us: “I’ve never met a tax cut I did not like”. If so, we may have been able to foresee that, over the past six quarters, tax receipts have been growing at 2.5x the growth rate of US nominal GDP?”

Gavekal Research

David...Obey is a liberal appropriator from Wisconsin who has been in the House for 37 loooong years. In his Almanac of American Politics, Michael Barone described Obey as "a true believer in traditional liberalism, in Keynesian economics and economic distribution." Obey thinks high [sic] of himself and his campaign name reveals it -- "Lot of People for David Obey".

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:24 PM | link