Dennis Hastert Quotes
Priorities like winning the War on Terror and providing tax relief that will keep our economy growing strong.
Hastert, Dennis. "Statement on Legislative Priorities." U.S. House of Representatives, 2004.
During the Iraq War, President George W. Bush, cut taxes several times as part of his economic philosophy. The result he claimed kept the economy sound. It also plunged the nation into the highest national deficit in U. S. History.
The Progressive article was an interview with Movie Director and Screenwriter Oliver Stone who told the interviewer that he had learned of this quotation when he did his research for his film, South of the Border where he had several interviews with President Kirchner.
Kennedy, with great Republican support proposed a reduction of the top income tax rate from 91% to 65%, reduction of the bottom rate from 20% to 14%, and a reduction in the corporate tax rate from 52% to 47%. That put the tax rates at the appropriate level. Economic growth was reasonable until President Reagan’s military spending cold war strategy produced huge deficits, Clinton raised the tax rates slightly and had the best economic growth ever, and had a balanced budget. George W. Bush lowered taxes had much slower growth and even larger deficits. However, by 2013 all hints of bipartisanship were gone. The Republicans claimed that the then tax rates were much too high—the highest income tax was half the rate that most agreed in 1962 was the right rate. And the corporate tax was 35 %, far lower than the Kennedy rate of 47% and incredibly lower when we consider that with deductions that were then in force the average corporate tax was only 12% the lowest since the Great Depression. Meanwhile the 2008 Bush Economic Meltdown and the Great Recession it produced the highest deficits in history with the lowest taxes in modern times and much of the polarized population demanding further tax cuts and an equal number demanding increased tax revenue.
War has always been a very expensive enterprise. The winner used to require the loser to pay the cost for years afterword, but with the Second World War the U. S. reversed the process. Since then winning a war has been extremely expensive, though not as much as continuing a war without resolution.
This quotation is important as it provides a major counter-example to the ideological political belief that tax cuts and deregulation produce economic growth. Sometimes they do, but other times they do not. Ironically the greatest periods of growth in the last half of the 20th century included some of the highest rates of taxes. At other times high taxes curtailed growth. As with many political ideologies, they are really not principles or laws of nature or economics, but political preferences.
John Dennis Hastert is an American former politician and child molester who represented Illinois's 14th congressional district from 1987 to 2007 and served as the 51st Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1999 to 2007, the longest-serving Republican Speaker of the House in history. After the Democrats gained a majority in the House, he resigned and began to work as a lobbyist. He is the last Speaker of the House to not be a Catholic.
