>CB: On the Bush tax cut, does it really matter ? The rich are
>already so rich and what is there to cut in social programs ? There
>isn't much federal money left for the working class , is there ?
Just to repeat this once more- spending on the poor in all its means-tested forms increased under Clinton- not just in nominal terms, and not just in real dollars, but have risen or at least held even as a percentage of the GDP.
>From budget tables at
http://w3.access.gpo.gov/usbudget/fy2001/sheets/hist08z4.xls
Between 1992 and 2001, total government outlays as a percentage of GDP fell 3.9%, from 22.2% to 18.3% of GDP
Of that decrease, 2% was from decreases in defense spending, which feel from 8.6% to 6.3% of GDP
1.2% was from decreases in interest payments, which feel from 3.2% to 2.1%
All domestic programs fell 0.2%, from 3.4% to 3.2%
In the budget, means-tested entitlements increased in Clinton's first few years in office, but levelled off to a holding pattern at 2.3% of GDP in both 1992 and 1993.
To put that in real dollar terms (1996 dollars), the rise in means-tested spending was from $154 billion to 213 billion.
Now, welfare deform did all sorts of bad things to the structure of aid, but the total dollars were preserved in such means-tested programs. Don't kid yourself that there is plenty of damage the GOP could do in cutting them down to the levels they hit in the mid-80s.
-- Nathan Newman