Bush Says Tax Cut Safer Without His Name Attached to It
Former President George W. Bush said tax reductions enacted during his presidency would be more likely to be maintained if they weren’t identified with his name.
“I wish they weren’t called the ‘Bush tax cuts,’” he said as he opened a tax policy conference hosted by his presidential institute, drawing laughs from an audience of supporters, economists and academics in New York City. “If they were called some other body’s cuts, they’re probably less likely to be raised.”
Bush, whose economic policies and legacy form a backdrop of this year’s presidential campaign debate over the nation’s fiscal future, said he didn’t intend to undermine the current White House occupant, even as he indirectly made the case against President Barack Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on high earners.
“I don’t think it’s good, frankly, for our country to undermine our president, and I don’t intend to do so,” Bush said at the event that drew Republican governors as well as former members of his administration to discuss tax policies. “But I do intend to remain involved in areas that I’m interested in,” including tax policy.
Taxing Job Creators
“If you raise taxes on the so-called rich, you’re really raising taxes on the job creators, and if the goal is private- sector growth, you’ve got to recognize that the best way to create that growth is to leave capital in the treasuries of the job creators,” Bush said at the start of the day-long meeting.
Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser who helped plan the conference, said organizers were “trying to keep politics out of this.”
Asked how its topic and Bush’s message might play in the presidential campaign, Rove said in an interview: “President Obama — with all due respect to him, and we’re trying to keep politics out of the conference today — has got a weak leg to stand on.”
“The policies that got us into this are policies that he contributed to,” he added, naming the collapse of Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac, two government-backed mortgage firms, as the main culprit in the financial meltdown over which Bush presided.
Rove said while Obama often “suggests” that the tax cuts enacted under Bush helped create the nation’s economic difficulties, he failed to repeal them and acted in 2010 to extend them for two years to spur a recovery.