GOP has bad record on tax cut stimulus

Rep. John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, and Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, are arguing that President Obama's proposed stimulus package must include larger tax cuts for the upper-income brackets, claiming they will have enormous simulative effects. Kevin Phillips (brilliant Republican strategist who created the so-called Southern Strategy that delivered the United States to the Republicans for most of the past 40 years) noted in his book "American Theocracy" that the Bush Administration's lowered rates on capital gains and dividends were calculated to produce only 9 cents of stimulus for every dollar of foregone revenue, and the reduction of overall rates only 59 cents on the dollar. However, he noted that the small amount of federal aid to state governments in the Bush package was rated at a more effective $1.24 of stimulus for every dollar.

Rep. Boehner's and Sen. McCain's argument for more Bush-style tax cuts is nonsensical. With tax cuts sugarcoated as the panacea for all economic ills, the Republicans have been drugging the public's mind for decades.

Tom Bartlett-Svehla

Mundelein