SENATE BILL: Fiscal Year 2014 White House Budget Proposal (Law'd)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Senators, a final vote is now open on the underlying budget Proposal, please vote Aye, Nay or Abstain.

[Maxwell]

As much as I dislike the top rate being 60%, I think this is the best we can do.

Aye.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

AYE

[TNF]

AYE.

The tax code isn't as progressive as I'd have liked, but the top rate of 60% is a definite improvement.

[tmthforu94]

Nay

I worry about what having such high tax rates would do to job growth. Hopefully we never actually have to face this in reality.

[TNF]

Nay

I worry about what having such high tax rates would do to job growth. Hopefully we never actually have to face this in reality.

We had a 94% top income tax rate in the 1950s and massive economic expansion. Under a Republican President.

[Maxwell]

Nay

I worry about what having such high tax rates would do to job growth. Hopefully we never actually have to face this in reality.

We had a 94% top income tax rate in the 1950s and massive economic expansion. Under a Republican President.

The effective top rate, and it's hard to dispute this, was much much lower than 94%. But let's sidestep that point, and look at the fact that during the Eisenhower Presidency, growth was actually a very anemic 2.2%.

Now let's compare that to administration that cut taxes deeply, actually, let's look at the very next President. President John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy cut the top rate down from that 94% to around 70%. Growth under the Kennedy administration was 5.5%. A massive difference right? Well, I buy into the idea that a certain rate is good for economic growth, and while it's higher than this imaginary U.S.A now, it's lower than the one we are putting forward.

[Sbane]

Aye

[Gass3268]

Aye

[Napoleon]

aye

[bore]

Aye

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

This has enough votes to pass, Senators have 24 hours to change their votes.

Nay

I worry about what having such high tax rates would do to job growth. Hopefully we never actually have to face this in reality.

We had a 94% top income tax rate in the 1950s and massive economic expansion. Under a Republican President.

The effective top rate, and it's hard to dispute this, was much much lower than 94%. But let's sidestep that point, and look at the fact that during the Eisenhower Presidency, growth was actually a very anemic 2.2%.

Now let's compare that to administration that cut taxes deeply, actually, let's look at the very next President. President John F. Kennedy. John F. Kennedy cut the top rate down from that 94% to around 70%. Growth under the Kennedy administration was 5.5%. A massive difference right? Well, I buy into the idea that a certain rate is good for economic growth, and while it's higher than this imaginary U.S.A now, it's lower than the one we are putting forward.

In fact it was one of the issues in 1960 that the economy had gone through three downturns and that growth was so slow. I am sure that the Eisenhower administration surely reaped the benefits of that "massive expansion" in 54 and 58 when Congressional Republicans got butchered partially because of two of those downtowns (as well as numerous other things such as McCarthy in the former and Sputnik in the latter).

Also, as I said numerous times before, the 1950's existed in a global economic anamoly stemming from the fact that the US was the only industrial country not blasted to hell by WWII. This allowed the US a greater degree of flexibility on the side of competativeness, even in spite of it occuring in an era of increasingly liberalized trade (coming off the Depression most agreed was made worse by protectionism), since there was no competition. Ironically the liberalized trade helped fuel the temporary respite from normal economic reality. The rebuilding countries relied heavily on the US to supply them both to hold them over and to effect the rebuilding, thus giving the US a lopsided share of global exports during that period.
Gold reserves shot up as well during that period, since the rebuilding countries used it to get loans and such. The return of such was one of the many factors that eventually forced the end of the gold based system in the 1970's.

It also didn't help that in the 1970's that when the US was facing stiff competition from Germany and Japan, its equipment was thirty years old and less efficient the new stuff the later two possessed. I am sure those sky high tax rates, necessary to repay the war debt of course, had the ironic delayed effect of thus helping to push production off shore.

I find it ironic, that our Keynesian friends love to use history (and out of context history at that) to justify deviating from their own bible's dictates regarding taxes and the impact they have on the macro-economic situation.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Vote on Final Passage of the Fiscal Year 2014 White House Budget Resolution:

Aye (7): bore, Gass3268, Maxwell, Napoleon, NC Yankee, sbane and TNF
Nay (1): Tmthforu94
Abstain (0):

Didn't Vote (2): TJ in Cleve and Xahar

With seven votes in the affirmative, the budget has been passed and is sent to the administration for executive action.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Sec. of State Superique]

I didn't know that we have got an Atlasian National Broadcaster... :/