The Bush Tax Cuts Cost 2 and a Half Times as Much as the House Democrats' Health Care Proposal

Citizens for Tax Justice:

Newly revised estimates from Citizens for Tax Justice show that the Bush tax cuts cost almost $2.5 trillion over the decade after they were first enacted (2001-2010). Preliminary estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office show that the House Democrats' health care reform legislation is projected to cost $1 trillion over the decade after it would be enacted (2010-2019).
 
And yet, many of the lawmakers who argue that the health care reform legislation is "too costly" are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts. Their own voting record demonstrates that health care reform is not a matter of costs, but a matter of priorities.

 Read the new report from Citizens for Tax Justice

These figures make clear that costs cannot be the real concern of lawmakers who oppose the House health care legislation and yet supported the Bush tax cuts. Their position seems to be that showering benefits on the wealthiest five percent of taxpayers and leaving the bill for future generations is preferable to making health care available for all at a much lower cost and paying that cost up front. That demonstrates a different set of priorities than most Americans have, but it doesn't demonstrate much concern about costs

Economist Brad Delong has pointed out that the Bush Tax Cuts weren't tax cuts.The Bush Tax--Well, They Aren't Cuts, They Never Were, They Were Just Shifts of the Tax Burden from Us to Our Descendants

Its important to remember that the Democrats have been the fiscally responsible wing of the two party system.  The Bush Tax Cuts, refusing to pay for the Iraq war with tax increases, putting in place an unfunded medicare perscription drug benifit plan that subsidized drug company profits at the expense of taxpayer dollars.

Economist Uwe E. Reinhardt recently reflected on 2003 health care reform debates and noted this very point--Democrats are much more fiscally responsible than Republicans in approaching reforms that american citizens are calling for, "American citizens — especially older ones — might keep this backdrop in mind as they behold and comment on the current administration’s and Congress’s travails to place the proposed health reforms of ’09 on a fiscally more responsible footing than was the M.M.A. ’03."  He digs into the options to fund health care and some of the hypocrisies of those who oppose funding health care reform.

Posted via web from Jim Nichols