Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - U.S. can’t afford tax cuts any longer, Voinovich says

pan6467 · 02-03-2006, 11:18 PM

With Voinovich saying this and his past differences with Bush, it is no wonder the Bushies are trying to destroy him. Cleveland's own Mike Trivisonno 10 years after the fact is trying to raise a campaign saying it was Voinovich not Modell that truly took the Browns out of Cleveland.

The Bushies are hitting Voinovich hard and I have a feeling will continue until he loses his seat to a Dem in '08 OR he falls into line and just does as told.

A true conservative and a great man. I disagree with him and think he sold out on the Gay Marriage issue but the man is a truly great politician and has always been.

Link: http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.p...202-A1-04.html

Quote:

U.S. can’t afford tax cuts any longer, Voinovich says
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Jack Torry
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

WASHINGTON — Extending tax cuts that President Bush wants to make permanent would place an immoral burden on future generations of Americans, a defiant Sen. George V. Voinovich of Ohio warned yesterday.

"It’s time to put the tax-cut medicine back on the shelf," he said, pointing out that the federal government is spending billions to stabilize Iraq, protect the country against terrorism and rebuild the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

"We’ve got to make some tough choices around here," Voinovich said, adding that it would be "immoral to bequeath trillions of dollars in debt to our children and grandchildren."

Bush called for preserving the tax cuts in his State of the Union address Tuesday, but Voinovich, a fellow Republican, said that lawmakers must devise ways to slash the federal deficit. Without reducing spending or allowing many tax cuts to expire, the national debt will grow to a staggering $11.2 trillion by the end of 2010, he said.

"This will not be politically easy, as I understand," Voinovich said. "The simple, undeniable fact is that we can’t have it all."

Voinovich spoke as the Senate opened debate on a tax-reduction measure that includes shielding more than 17 million Americans from the alternative minimum tax, which was designed to make certain that the wealthy paid at least some tax. But throughout the years, the tax has taken an increasingly larger bite out of middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers.

Senate Republican leaders want to move the bill into a conference committee, where it could be combined in some fashion with a House version approved last year. The White House and conservative Republicans back the House bill because it would extend through 2010 lower federal taxes on corporate dividends and capital gains, the latter being the profit from the sale of stock and real estate.

Those tax breaks are scheduled to expire at the end of 2008. The House also has approved a measure that would protect middle-income taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax.

In his State of the Union address, Bush urged that Congress make permanent all the tax cuts from 2001, 2002 and 2003, which include federal income taxes and child-tax credits. Most of those tax cuts are scheduled to expire during the next four years.

After supporting Bush’s tax cuts in the president’s first term, Voinovich in the past year expressed deep misgivings about the growing federal deficit. Critics suggested Voinovich’s shift occurred after the 2004 elections when Republicans increased their Senate majority to 55 and no longer needed Voinovich’s vote to pass future tax cuts.

But Voinovich is the reason the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains expire at the end of 2008. When Republicans pushed those investment tax breaks through Congress in 2003, they wanted them to last for 10 years. But Voinovich would only support the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains if they expired at the end of 2008 and, in the closely divided Senate, he prevailed.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last month concluded that the government would operate on a small surplus by 2012 if all the Bush tax cuts expired on schedule.

Voinovich conceded that he voted for the tax cuts in Bush’s first term to provide a jolt to a then-listless economy. But Voinovich said today "the economy is growing" and that "like any other medicine, an overdose of tax cuts can, in my opinion, do more harm than the original disease."

He dismissed conservative claims that tax cuts do not cost the government money because they spark the economy and generate greater receipts. Instead, Voinovich said while the Bush tax cuts did not lead to the staggering revenue losses originally projected, they "are never free."

Despite the sharp rhetoric, Voinovich did not completely rule out tax reductions. At one point, he said he could not support tax cuts "at this time." And Voinovich would support protection for many taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, if that provision is paid for through either cuts or increases of other taxes.

jtorry@dispatch.com

It's fun here in Ohio watching the GOP destroy their own, however it is sad to see them trying to destroy the truly good guys, Petro, Voinovich, Dewine and not the bad ones like Blackwell, Taft, Montgomery.....