Good news for plutocrats and war profiteers: JEB! Bush Promises to Govern Just Like His Brother, But Even More So

(Daily Intelligencer) - George W. Bush passed a sweeping across-the-board tax cut in 2001, promising his plan would promote faster economic growth while still allowing budget surpluses. Instead, Bush’s plan brought back the structural deficits that had disappeared during the 1990s, along with a mediocre recovery that was itself inflated by a housing bubble, the popping of which culminated in the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression. You might think that the brother of that guy would go out of his way to prove that he has different ideas for fiscal policy. Instead, Jeb Bush has unveiled his tax-cut plan, and it’s the same thing his brother did, only more extreme.

Bush’s plan, unveiled in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, would replicate his brother’s program in extremis. Like Dubya, Jeb would reduce income taxes at the bottom of the earning scale. Dubya reduced the estate tax; Jeb would eliminate it entirely. Dubya cut the top tax rate to 35 percent, while Jeb would lower it all the way to 28 percent. Unlike his brother, he would also slash corporate tax rates, from 28 percent to 20 percent.

George W. put a number on the size of his tax cut. He proposed a tax cut of $1.6 trillion over a decade, which Congress ultimately reduced to $1.35 trillion, though subsequent tax cuts pushed the size higher. It is impossible to precisely measure the impact of the Bush tax cuts on either the budget or the economy, since nobody can know what would have happened under identical conditions if the tax cuts had never been enacted.

But the results certainly were not good. Read more.