https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/23/1865989/-Heavy-medal?fbclid=IwAR1pJJBhckE4JjhytRpArqXB86Zso9C8j0ODuH27w0GpZ-C9N1hNDuxyVz8
"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts. The history of the Bush years, too, shows that the arc of the Laffer Curve is short but bends toward fiscal catastrophe. After Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt, George W. Bush nearly doubled it again. Inheriting a federal budget in the black and a CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years, Bush quickly set about dismantling the progress made under Bill Clinton. In 2001, Bush signed a $1.4 trillion tax cut, followed by another $550 billion round in 2003, the first war-time tax cut in modern American history. (It is more than a little ironic that Paul Ryan at the time called the tax cuts "too small" because he believed the estimated surplus Bush would later eviscerate would be even larger than predicted.) In keeping with Republican orthodoxy that "tax cuts pay for themselves," Bush confidently proclaimed: “You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase.” As it turned out, not so much. Federal revenue did not return to its pre-Bush tax cut level until 2006. As a share of American GDP, tax revenues peaked in 2000—that is, before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Analyses in 2010 by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the deficits during his tenure and if made permanent, over the next decade would cost the U.S. Treasury more than Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, TARP, and the stimulus—combined. By the time he shuffled out of the Oval Office in January 2009, Bush bequeathed a $3.5 trillion budget and a $1.2 trillion annual deficit to his successor, Barack Obama."
