The increase in the national debt under bush* = 5 trillion

In order to demonstrate that it is not the “Party of No,” the GOP released an 18-page outline of an alternative to President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, which White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs complained “took me several minutes to read.” Blogger Ezra Klein uses italics to point out what may be a problem with the proposal: “The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend.” He continues, “This is not a budget. It talks about balancing the budget but doesn't explain how. It advocates tax cuts but doesn't estimate their costs. It promises to cut programs but doesn't name them.”

In order to demonstrate that it is not the “Party of No,” the GOP released an 18-page outline of an alternative to President Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget, which White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs complained “took me several minutes to read.” Blogger Ezra Klein uses italics to point out what may be a problem with the proposal: “The Republican budget proposal does not say how much money they would raise, or spend.” He continues, “This is not a budget. It talks about balancing the budget but doesn't explain how. It advocates tax cuts but doesn't estimate their costs. It promises to cut programs but doesn't name them.”

kind of explains why nobody trusts them with the public purse now

Everything about this thread is a joke. From the name of the OP to the left wing dribble he and others are spewing. Since the OP insists as do others in here on bashing the "PUBLICANS"...I will now revert to my old ways. You DEMONCRATS are going to ruin this nation simply by giving more money to fix a problem you helped create! More welfare...more usless social programs..TRILLIONS of more dollars in debt. We can not spend our way out of this mess folks. We have to CUT spending. That means welfare and the billions in fraud it costs. But the DEMONCRATS will not cut the welfare rolls simply because it is their voter base. Universal health care? You bet...how do you suppose we pay for that one? Are you stupid enough to believe your taxes will not go up? How about the tax break for the so called 95%? ..The obama got his budget bill passed and guess what? NO TAX CUT!
THE BOTTOM LINE...
Both the DEMONCRATS and the PUBLICANS have screwed this nation and the world...now what are we going to do to fix it

...but I'm coming to the conclusion that "capitalism" is truly dead. It's been replaced by legalized theft, extortion, highway robbery and all other manner of schemes by which one select group of people avails themselves to funds which they didn't earn, have no moral claim to (by way of working for...other than planning the heist!)

It Amazes me.... even at this point..... that the shameless supporters of the disgraced Republican party still come on here to defend the same BS that got us here in the first place.

The only reason we're even discussing bailouts, TARP, saving the home owners, unemployed, Auto makers, and the record deficits is because the People YOU ALL SUPPORTED have BENT this country over backwards with their Borrow and Spend non-sence!

Its one thing to borrow to make your own country better, but to put this country in massive debt under the guise of giving some other country freedom...... who dont even want our brand of freedom in the first place.

And now providing nothing but utter failure in every department the republicans claimed the championed they have the nerve to come with 2 nice blue covers filled with talking points, BUT NO FREAKIN SOLUTION TO THE HOLE THEY DUG FOR ALL OF US!!

But determined not to be undone by their former leader, The(y) continue , well after his departure to offer NOTHING in the ways of solution to the crisis, but to oppose every idea for the sake of partisanship.

The one good thing that will come of all this is that they will ommit political suicide with all their nonsence heading into 2010 and beyond.

The independent party will rise to fill the gap, much like mammals did after the demise of the dinosaurs and for the same reasons.........
One will evolve and adapt, and the other will die clutching onto the old way's.

Truth be Told, The GOP deserves to DIE as a party for all they have done to this country, and the voters left, right, and center are no longer so blinded by fear of terrorist threats to ignor(e) the BS any more.

shameless supporters

The only reason we're even discussing bailouts, TARP, saving the home owners, unemployed, Auto makers, and the record deficits is because the People YOU ALL SUPPORTED have BENT this country over backwards with their Borrow and Spend non-sence!

More Blowhard bullshit from the right.
More De-regulation.
More Lies about the state of our economy like not including lil things like the two Bleeding wars to affect the budget numbers.

Their idea of helping is like passing a bucket of gasoline to a man trying to put out the fire they set for him.

One of the things I noticed in the various budgets and tax plans touted during the elections is that the republicans consistently create more welfare and social programs than the Democrats. The Republicans buy the poor vote by keeping them financially dependent.

Democrat programs are consistently about educating people off the welfare rolls. Stimulating the creation of new jobs for Americans. Democrats don't do hand outs ... they do hand ups.

Want more welfare? Look at how much more Republicans keep lowering the taxes of the poor and create enslaving handouts. Lower taxes for the poor and wealthy = the Republican way. Who has to pick up the costs? The middle class.

No Freedom in Iraq.

Iraq is becoming a flourishing democracy in 2009.

Are we as a county safer?

Second, tax rates on corporations are too high at 40%

As the GAO study documents and the historical record proves, corporate tax dodging is directly linked to the reduction of corporate tax revenues. Corporate tax receipts dropped from an average of 4.8 percent of GDP during the 1950s to 1.3 percent of GDP in FY2003. Treasury Department figures show that actual corporate income tax revenues fell 36 percent from FY2000 to FY2003. And while the statutory corporate income tax rate is 35 percent, the effective corporate tax rate - the actual share of corporate taxes paid on corporate profits - has averaged just 26 percent since 1993, according to the Congressional Research Service.

As corporate tax receipts decreased, payroll taxes, the most regressive of all taxes, increased dramatically. Specifically, payroll taxes increased from 1.6 percent of GDP in FY1950 to 6.8 percent of GDP in FY2002

Yet the Bush administration was able to find room in its 2004 budget to dramatically increase funding for compliance with the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for low-income families. The Bush budget requested a 68.5 percent increase in EITC enforcement, despite the fact that EITC avoidance represents only 2.8 percent of the overall uncollected tax gap.

Second, tax rates on corporations are too high at 40%

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress. The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.


Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO’s estimate.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

.................................................

So why is this happening?
An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called “S” corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.


“Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code,” Edwards said.

Also…

[Sen. Byron] Dorgan and [Sen. Carl] Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices - amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities.

Revenue from the corporate income tax fell from between 5 and 6 percent of GDP in the early 1950s to 2.7 percent of GDP in 2007.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/revenue.cfm

http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/07230%20r.pdf

from page 42


OECD Corp Tax Ratios 2000-2005

........................Coporate..............Coporate..............................Coporate
.......................Tax/GDP......... Tax/Corporate Surplus........... Surplus/GDP
Country..

Australia............6.7%................ 30.5%...................................... 21.9%
Austria..............2.6% ................11.2%.......................................22.9%
Belgium............3.6%.................17.1%.......................................21.2%
Canada............3.8%..................14.5%.......................................26.3%
Czech Republic 4.3%.................15.7%...................................... 27.4%
Denmark............3.1%................15.0%...................................... 20.6%
Finland ............4.3%.................16.2%...................................... 26.8%
France..............3.4%.................20.0%......................................17.1%
Germany...........1.6%................. 7.2%...................................... 22.2%
Greece..............2.9%.................15.0%.................................... 19.8%
Japan................3.6%.................16.4%.................................... 21.4%
Korea................3.5%.................14.3%.................................... 25.0%
Poland...............2.0%................ 11.3%................................... 18.5%
Portugal.............3.4%................ 17.2%................................... 19.7%
Slovak Republic. 2.8%................ 11.5%................................... 24.4%
Spain.................3.2%................ 16.7%................................... 19.4%
Switzerland.........3.0%................ 14.4%................................... 21.1%
United Kingdom.. 4.9%................ 27.7%................................... 17.5%

United States......2.2%................ 13.4%.................................... 16.7%

OECD Average......... 3.4% .............16.1%................................. 21.6%


Average Tax Rates (ATRs)
Although EMTRs capture the marginal disincentive for corporate investment introduced
by taxation, they do not measure the overall portion of corporate income taken as taxes. For thispurpose, corporate average tax rates (ATRs) – the ratio of corporate taxes to corporate capital income – are more appropriate. The average corporate tax rate may differ from the general marginal rate for several reasons, including the existence of significant economic profits and various additional corporate tax deductions and credits. The level of tax compliance and enforcement can also cause remittance rates to differ from statutory rates.

The ideal corporate ATR would measure the ratio of total taxes on corporate-source
income to corporate capital income (“operating surplus”), or total taxes on corporate equity to corporate profits. Limitations of the OECD tax revenue and national income data, which do not break out individual-level taxes on corporate-source income, only permit examination of a proxy measure: the ratio of corporate-level tax remittances to the corporate operating surplus. The ratio of corporate tax remittances to GDP is also sometimes used as a measure of the corporate tax burden. This ratio can be decomposed into the ratio of corporate taxes to corporate operating surplus – a measure of the tax burden on the corporate sector, multiplied by the ratio of the corporate operating surplus to GDP, a measure of the size of the corporate sector.


Table 5.3 presents these three ratios for a sample of OECD countries. Because empirical
tax ratios can be sensitive to the business cycle, average annual ratios for 2000-2005 are
presented. The U.S. ratio of corporate remittances to GDP, at 2.2 percent, is below the OECD average of 3.4 percent. This ratio decomposes into the U.S. ratio of corporate taxes to corporate operating surplus (13.4 percent) and the ratio of U.S. corporate operating surplus to GDP (16.7 percent), which are both below the OECD averages of 16.1 percent and 21.6 percent, respectively. Thus it appears that, despite its high statutory CIT rate, the United States takes a below-average share of corporate income in taxes (at least, at the corporate level), and that the United States also has a relatively small corporate sector. The below-average U.S. corporate ATR contrasts with the above-average U.S. statutory tax rate and average EMTR (although above average integrated EMTRs), suggesting that the United States may have a higher than average level of corporate tax preferences.