It was balanced/surplused when Clinton left, but then again, your denial is generally more powerful in your mind than the facts, so I'm probably wasting my time here... Yes since Clinton was the President at the time then he deserves the credit for all good things that happened and Congress all the bad things. The Democrats had numerous times to balance the budget when they controlled all three branches of the govt. Why didn't they? ...and which party wanted an amendment to the consitution to balance the federal budget? Well you boy Clinton had all three branches of govt. when he was first elected. Why wasn't it amended then? To tell you the truth I wish the Democrats would have suceeded but we both know no policitian is going to put a permanent spending cap on themselves. Just look at the debt ceiling cap that was put on a few short years ago. All that they are doing now is raising it. What good is the cap if all you do is raise it every time you need more money?
hey bung, explain to me how Bush caused the market to crash before he was even elected? was it just so obvious that he would win and that scared people or did your buddy cheney somehow rig things?
does anyone know if the tax gains cut is being considered in the senate bill? I know the house had a 5% reduction but all the focus in the senate it towards div cut.. but haven't heard a thing about cap gains cut.
sammy, I am not 100% sure but I don't think the Senate version has a cap gains cut in it and the version I heard about actually had tax increases in it. The House's version is 10x better. Eric
thanks for the response.. its is very disconcerting to me that they are concentrating so heavily on div cuts and not cap gains.. a cornerstone of the republicans.
this idea that the Democrats are against deficit spending is absolutely nuts ! If you honestly think we woud still be running surpluses under Gore you are totally insane.
The Seante bill is far inferior to the House bill. Rep. Bill Thomas came up with an innovative combination of lowering the cap gains rate and taxing cap gains and dividends at the same rate. This does not totally address the economic distortion of double taxation of dividends, but it's a far better solution than the convoluted Senate bill. The Conference Committee will have to somehow come up with something palatable to both houses, which will not be easy. The problem of course is the $350 billion tax cut limit imposed on the Senate by the Democrats, with the aid of big government Republicans like Olympia Snow and Susan Collins. You have to wonder what motivates these Republicans that they would rather anger their entire party and undermine their own president than gracefully compromise on a made up number that covers 10 years of budgets running into the many trillions of dollars.
It looks like for this year that 50% of the dividends received will be tax free;and from 2004-2006,all of it will be tax free.Does anyone know for this year what the maximum tax rate will be on 50% of the dividends?
yes I'm still not sure that understand the timeslines too. are these retroactive? published by IRS somewhere?