Shocker...Conservatives drained coffers: parliamentary budget officer.

8 posts / 0 new

Fri, 2008-11-21 11:24

Mojoroad1

Quote:
Harper's ability to respond to the crisis has been undercut by his own government's record of tax cuts, which has emptied federal coffers, the parliamentary budget officer concluded in a report released yesterday.

Budget officer Kevin Page concluded the federal Conservatives are likely to run budget deficits "in the near term," possibly beginning this year, and that the fault lies as much with Finance Minister Jim Flaherty as it does with the weak economy. Page's report projects a budget deficit of $3.9 billion in 2009-10. But it adds that, if the economic downturn proves worse than expected, next year's federal deficit could hit $14 billion.

Full article: http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/540934

Fri, 2008-11-21 13:55

thorin_bane

Yeah but they are claiming that "their" numbers are different than the buget officers. The only thing they can't claim is it is a left wing report, becaue they appointed the guy...what out though he may get fired.

______________________________________________________________________________________
"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."
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Fri, 2008-11-21 16:34

Fidel

It will give deficit slaying Liberals an excuse to pursue scorched earth policies whenever they seize phony majority power down the road. Whigs, Tories, they're the same fuckin' party.

Fri, 2008-11-21 18:20

aka Mycroft

Reaganomic tax cuts didn't balance the budget (US or Canadian) in the US and they aren't going to do that now.

Fri, 2008-11-21 19:33

DrConway

Sad thing is, if we bothered to reinstate the tax rates of the 1960s, we'd have much more fiscal room to shower the working poor and the really poor with some much-needed stimulus payments and tax cuts.

Just an eyeball on the tax structure of the 1950s and 1960s - dividing the median wage by 5 gives a rough estimate of what it would have been back then, so that's $30k / 5 which is $6k a year in 1960-ish dollars.

I believe back then that someone who made $6k barely paid any income tax at all. So people who make $30k or less should be paying zero, that's ZERO, income tax.

Sat, 2008-11-22 02:31

thorin_bane

No no no. They would waste it on popcorn and beer.

Sat, 2008-11-22 08:07

Tommy_Paine

But in the 50's and 60's, the economy and government was in held in charge by people who had personal experience with the Great Depression, who knew the outcomes of magical thinking.

Harper and Jimmy "the impaler" Flaherty are still operating with the "starve the beast" dogma. So, their repeal of some of the GST wasn't designed to put money back in our pockets as much as it was to depleat government revenues, on the magical thought that such a move would result in better goverment spending.

However, repeal of these flat taxes, whether they are sales taxes or user fees is the way to go, as long as the revenue is maintained through a truly graduated income tax that has no "deductions", or as they really should be called, subsidies.

Of course, this doesn't account for Family Compact politics. Flaherty has been quietly throwing money at the fake economy, bailing out our supposedly untroubled banks to the tune of 75 billion dollars. The pretext of which is to loosen up the credit purse strings.

Which of course, the banks have not done.

Buy taking our 75 billion dollars and giving it away to the banks, the Conservatives have ended up concentrating even more of our wealth into the few hands of the non value added sector of the economy.

They have thrown gasoline on the fire.

Sat, 2008-11-22 11:57

thorin_bane

I think THESE cons are even more right wing than paulie pockets. It almost seems sureal that canadians could pine for the days of malroney.