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| The same thing we would charge him with concerning 9/11, considering his role was the same. He financed the attack in 1993 & financed the attack in 2001. |
Actually, we have a bit more evidence to pin 9/11 on him. For instance, the fact that he actually admitted it. Not so true of the 1993 attacks.
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| Morris' chronology is a bit off when he says "our first shot at bin laden came in...1998", as he has also mentioned the aforementioned event in 1996 when Sudan offered bin Laden to Clinton, in lieu of just banishing him (which is what Sudan ended up doing, resulting in him going to Afghanistan where he later gave the go-ahead for 9/11): |
Nope, it's not off. Assuming Sudan's "silver platter" claims are credible (they're not), we wouldn't have had enough to make anything stick. That Clinton was afraid to ruffle feathers I don't think is in question. I don't see how this amounts to him being responsible for 9/11 than Bush's sitting on the pre-attack intelligence. Both men arguably could've prevented it, neither did, and I don't think it's fair to criticize EITHER man's decisions based on what we now know Bin Laden would eventually do.
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| I would also note that I have heard the current Council of Economic Advisers to Bush and the American Enterprise Institute state the exact opposite numerous times.). |
Okay.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/16/AR2006101601121.html
"Robert Carroll, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax analysis, said neither the president nor anyone else in the administration is claiming that tax cuts alone produced the unexpected surge in revenue. 'As a matter of principle, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves,' Carroll said."
Carroll was from that Council. But I'll spot you this one:
"But, he said, 'we do think good tax policy can lead to important economic benefits. . . . The size of the tax base is larger than it would have been without the tax relief.'"
Whether or not he was actually referring to Bush's tax policy as "good tax policy" is a matter of perception, I guess.
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| Then there's the Cato Institute, which is an independent group, but has a libertarian bias, released a report which came up with the exact opposite report: |
Actually, I had read both of those reports some time ago. I don't disagree with their broader points, but nor do they say anything about almost half the country paying more taxes under Reagan (they did), smaller share of the overall burden notwithstanding.
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| I'm definitely not arguing that. It would be naive to think that all rules or policies work all the time. |
I believe I could be forgiven for assuming that, given that when I said more or less the same thing, you told me I need to take Econ 101 and proceded to more or less argure for a direct inverse relationship between tax rates and economic growth. If you were in fact not arguing that, then I gladly admit error.
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| It could be much worse though, as without the tax cuts, the four or five years in which the economy expanded under Bush would have been a continued recession, or at best, a stagnant 0% GDP growth rate. (The natural economic cycle notwithstanding). |
I'm listening. Do you have anything to back that point up?
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| There's an exception to every rule, and the individual situation dictates what needs to be done. There are definitely rare times where a tax increase is needed. However, most of the time, cutting taxes is in the country's best interests. |
Agreed on the first point. Agreed on the second. Eeeehrr I don't know about the third one, I think the jury's still out. I think it's safe to say that deficits are not in the country's best interests, and since I don't see government spending decreasing drastically any time soon, tax cuts MAY not NECESSARILY be in the country's best interests most of the time. Certainly prohibitive tax rates are not in the country's best interests, but there's probably room for argument as to what is actually prohibitive. That's why I find the whole supply side/demand side debate rather pointless. There's not enough data to come down definitively on either side.