Scary Deficit Forecasts For Clinton YearsFade As Tax Revenue Grows
It Rises Faster Than Outlays, Thanks to ’93 Budget BillAnd a Steady Economy
Where has the federal deficit gone? 출장마사지
When Bill Clinton was elected president four years ago, the government was hemorrhaging red ink at a rate of almost $300 billion a year, and forecasters saw little improvement in the offing. Today, his budget office estimates the fiscal 1996 deficit at just $117 billion—the lowest in dollar terms since 1981, the year Ronald Reagan took office.
Measured as a share of the total economy, the U.S. deficit this year will run only about 1.6%—smaller than the deficits of Japan, Germany, Britain or, indeed, any of the world’s advanced nations except Norway.
Clearly, a stronger-than-expected economy has a lot to do with it. The tax increases in the 1993 deficit-reduction package that Mr. Clinton pushed through get credit as well. And, to a lesser extent, so do the spending cuts engineered by the Republican Congress…
For the current fiscal year, ending Sept. 30, collections now are expected to be $97 billion higher than the $1.356 trillion the Congressional Budget Office projected 3 ½ years ago as Mr. Clinton was taking office. That is about 7% more.
By the CBO’s analysis, just over half of the $97 billion increase beyond projections is due to tax boosts in Mr. Clinton’s 1993 antideficit plan. The rest is due to a variety of factors.
—WALL STREET JOURNAL, August 1, 1996, A1.
(Note: For the deficit reduction, the Journal gave more credit to Clinton’s tax increases than to the cost-cutting Republican Congress.)
And another year later—the Journal is still giving credit to “tax-on-wealthy” for the deficit reduction: 출장마사지
Tax on Wealthy Is Boosting U.S. Revenue Treasury Says 1993 Increase Is Helping Cut the Deficit
President Clinton sold the 1993 income-tax increase as a way to shrink the budget deficit at the expense of the rich.
Republican adversaries predicted it wouldn’t generate much revenue because the rich would work less and take bigger deductions. Now there’s growing, if still tentative, evidence that Mr. Clinton may have been right after all.
The recent flood of revenue pouring into Treasury coffers—enough to push the federal budget to a record $93.94 billion surplus for the month of April—appears to have come mostly from the nation’s biggest earners, indicating that the controversial tax increase may indeed be taking from the rich. “The available data suggest the surge in tax collections has come from the taxpayers with high incomes, who were the only ones affected by the 1993 changes,” says Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
Corporate taxes, which were increased modestly under the 1993 law, also have brought in more revenue, but at about the level the Treasury had been predicting…
The package, part of the 1993 budget agreement, drew harsh criticism from the right. Texas GOP Rep. Dick Armey, who is now the House majority leader, predicted dire results, “Who can blame many second-earner families for deciding that the sacrifice of a second job is no longer worth it?” he wrote…
“The basic fact is that people looked at the 1993 budget agreement and said there’d be a recession, the deficit would go way up and that tax collections would go way down,” says Mr. Summers. “What has happened is there has been a boom, the deficit has gone way down and tax collections have gone way up.” 출장안마
—WALL STREET JOURNAL, May 22, 1997, A2.
Not only was the entire national deficit eliminated after raising taxes on the wealthy in 1993, but the economy grew so fast for the remainder of the decade that many conservative economists thought that the Fed should raise the prime interest rate in order to slow it down.
This is another of conservatives’ hidden agendas: they keep promising workers that if we cut taxes on the wealthy and the economy grows, their wages will go up. But when wages even start to go up—for whatever reason—conservatives do everything they can to slow down the economy. They never openly tell the public about the second part of their strategy when they discuss taxes, economic growth and wages.