Robert McIntyre

The best news on the economic and budget front in December was the failure of Republicans to ram their big corporate tax-cut package through Congress in the name of “stimulus.” The bad news was that nothing was done to boost the economy and help those most hurt by the recession. What went wrong? Unfortunately, press […]

Special-interest zeal to use the national-security crisis as an excuse for huge new upper-income tax breaks continues unabated in Washington, D.C. On a party-line vote, the House on October 24 approved a bloated “stimulus” tax-cut bill that makes a mockery of the previous bipartisan agreement between congressional leaders and the administration that additional stimulus measures […]

N othing so neatly differentiates the presidential candidates as their views on taxes. George W. Bush offers a rather extreme version of what passes for “conservative” fiscal policy these days. This philosophy doesn’t tout deficit spending per se, but holds that low taxes, particularly on the wealthy, are the Holy Grail. Many who support this […]

When Abraham Lincoln faced the dissolution of the nation in the early 1860s, he imposed new taxes on the wealthy to help pay to save the Union. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took America to war against the Nazis, he sharply increased taxes on businesses and the rich to help fund that crusade. Now George W. […]

During the House debate in early March on the first round of the Bush tax cuts, Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas stood up on the House floor and tried to revise history. “Mr. Speaker,” said DeLay, “I have to say, that the Democrat leadership has no credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They […]

I f I understand Max correctly, our main points of disagreement seem to be the following: A couple of times, he challenges the truism that paying off debt now will make it easier for future taxpayers to maintain or enhance public programs–just as Reagan’s big debt buildup in the 1980s made it harder to maintain […]

If you want to understand what corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C., are trying to foist on us with the pending “stimulus” bill, look back to the first half of the 1980s. In 1981, Ronald Reagan pushed a huge tax-cut bill through Congress. Forcorporations, it offered an array of new loopholes, centered on super-accelerated”depreciation” write-offs for […]

George W. Bush’s transition team and House Minority Whip Tom DeLay may have had an unacknowledged motive to delay passage of the 2001 budget: An idea going around in December was to put off the budget bill until February so that it could be combined with repeal of the federal estate tax. Because budget reconciliation […]

Tax-Cut Fever Alan Greenspan has blessed a tax cut, the budget surpluses are said to be bigger than ever, and Republicans control all branches of the federal government. Are we ready to rumble with George W. Bush’s gigantic tax cuts? Can we cut taxes even more? Take a deep breath. The projected surpluses. […]

Dept. of Boneheaded Studies In 1999, two states, New Hampshire and Tennessee, considered adopting a broad-based income tax. This sent antitax lobbying groups into a frenzy of “studies” purporting to show that such a step would be a disaster for the economies of the two states. The lamest of the reports was published in mid-October […]