Flashback to the Bush Error: In 2001, Paul Ryan defended budget-busting tax cuts

Today, we’re begin­ning a new series on The Advo­cate called Flash­back to the Bush Error that will fea­ture new install­ments on Fri­days each week through Elec­tion Day. The pur­pose of this series is to doc­u­ment and explore Paul Ryan and Mitt Rom­ney’s sup­port for the failed poli­cies of George W. Bush dur­ing the eight years that Bush was in pow­er (Jan­u­ary 2001 — Jan­u­ary 2009).

Philoso­pher George San­tayana once reflect­ed that those who can­not remem­ber the past are con­demned to repeat it. Giv­en how short our atten­tion spans seem to be these days, we think it’s worth remem­ber­ing what hap­pened to our coun­try pri­or to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s acces­sion to pow­er in the his­toric pres­i­den­tial elec­tion of 2008.

Our hope is that this series helps illus­trate dif­fer­ences between the cam­paign plat­forms of Barack Obama/Joe Biden and Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan, which are quite stark. The tra­di­tion­al media spends way too much ink, air­time, and pix­els doing horse-race style polit­i­cal cov­er­age (who’s win­ning, who’s los­ing). We’re going to do our best to steer the con­ver­sa­tion in a dif­fer­ent direction.

In this first install­ment, we’ll be delv­ing into Paul Ryan’s record on fis­cal matters.

Ryan and his admir­ers have long por­trayed him as a prin­ci­pled man who is very con­cerned about our abil­i­ty to “live with­in our means”, which is a favorite max­im of con­ser­v­a­tives. In real­i­ty, Ryan deserves a healthy per­cent­age of the blame for the mess that we’re in as a coun­try. Let’s begin with some context.

Paul Ryan was first elect­ed to the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives in 1998, dur­ing the sec­ond midterm elec­tions of Bill Clin­ton’s pres­i­den­cy. (That was the same year Jay Inslee returned to Con­gress in Wash­ing­ton State).

At the time he was sworn in, he was the sec­ond youngest mem­ber of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. It was­n’t long before House Repub­li­can lead­er­ship assigned him to the Com­mit­tee on Ways and Means.

As I allud­ed to above, in 2001, Ryan was an enthu­si­as­tic sup­port­er of George W. Bush’s pro­pos­al to slash fed­er­al income tax­es, espe­cial­ly for the wealthy. In debates on the House floor, he stuck to his assigned talk­ing points when giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to weigh in on the mer­its (or lack there­of) of the tax cuts:

Mr. Speak­er, I thank the chair­man for yield­ing me this time. I have been lis­ten­ing to this debate with a lot of won­der. I am a new­er mem­ber to the com­mit­tee and a new­er Mem­ber to Con­gress. It is amaz­ing to me the excus­es we are hear­ing to fur­ther sep­a­rate peo­ple from their own mon­ey. We hear that this tax cut is just too big, it is irre­spon­si­ble, we can­not han­dle it. I refer Mem­bers to this chart which shows that this is six cents on the dol­lar, six cents on the dol­lar that every Amer­i­can tax­pay­er is send­ing to Wash­ing­ton over the next ten years. $1.6 tril­lion out of $28 trillion.

— Paul Ryan, March 8th, 2001 (Source: Con­gres­sion­al Record)

Two months lat­er, Ryan again urged pas­sage of the Eco­nom­ic Growth and Tax Relief Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Act of 2001, claim­ing it would lead to broad­er prosperity:

We are pay­ing down the nation­al debt as fast as we can. And even after doing all of those things, you are still over­pay­ing your tax­es. What we are sim­ply say­ing is rather than take your mon­ey and find new ways to spend it for you here in Wash­ing­ton, we want to give it back to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, put the mon­ey back into their pay­checks as they over­pay their tax­es, and revive this engine of eco­nom­ic growth, small busi­ness­es and entre­pre­neurs, and prey on peo­ple’s hopes and dreams and aspi­ra­tions. That is what this all about.

— Paul Ryan, May 16th, 2001 (Source: Con­gres­sion­al Record)

Of course, by the end of the Bush years, the nation­al debt had sky­rock­et­ed as a result of years of deficit spend­ing, job loss­es were mount­ing by the month, and income inequal­i­ty had reached a dis­turb­ing new high.

Ryan was not the only one claim­ing that the Bush tax cuts would do won­ders for the economy.

The con­ser­v­a­tive Her­itage Foun­da­tion went so far as to explic­it­ly pre­dict that pas­sage of the Bush tax cuts would “effec­tive­ly” result in the elim­i­na­tion of the nation­al debt by 2010. Repub­li­cans promised the the peo­ple of the Unit­ed States that slash­ing tax­es would be the great­est pos­si­ble thing for the econ­o­my and was a fis­cal­ly sen­si­ble course of action.

They were dead wrong then, and they’re dead wrong now.

Paul Ryan and Mitt Rom­ney want to return us to the Bush error. They’ve tried to avoid sound­ing like apol­o­gists for Bush on the cam­paign trail, because they don’t want to be asso­ci­at­ed with one of the most unpop­u­lar pres­i­dents in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. But the real­i­ty is, they want to pick up where Dubya left off. They want to return us to the same failed poli­cies that wrecked our econ­o­my and cost us our moral author­i­ty around the world. We can’t afford that.