I’m not a huge fan of Stenny Hoyer, but I love how he takes the GOP to the woodshed on taxes in this statement.
“Very frankly, history shows that to be a fallacious argument. That was the argument they made in 1993 — that we were going to destroy the economy; that deficits were going to explode; that unemployment would skyrocket, and that the stock market would tank.
That’s the argument that [Dick] Armey made. That’s the argument that [Newt] Gingrich made. That’s the argument that [Tom] Delay made. That’s the argument that every one of their people made. Every one of them. To a person. Unanimously.
They were dead flat wrong.
Exactly the opposite happened. The stock market went up 226 percent; we balanced the budget for 4 years in a row; we didn’t borrow an additional dime; we didn’t increase the debt. In the last 4 years of the Clinton administration we ended up with a $62.9 billion surplus — the only administration in your lifetime … that ended up with a surplus.
They were absolutely dead flat wrong. They continue, however, unabashedly, and undeterred, in making an argument which has proven to be dead flat wrong.