Every single House Republican votes against the Peters Amendment to insert factual findings about how the Bush Tax Cuts added over $2 trillion to the deficit

Washington, D.C. - Today every single House Republican voted against an amendment by U.S. Rep. Gary Peters to insert factual findings about the Bush Tax Cuts into a Republican budget bill (H.R. 3582). The Peters Amendment was defeated by a vote of 174 to 244 with every Republican voting no.

“I’m disappointed that every single one of my Republican colleagues refused to admit that the Bush Administration was wrong when they told the American people that the Bush Tax Cuts would pay for themselves,” said U.S. Rep. Gary Peters. “We are in the middle of a jobs crisis and have serious deficit problems that need to be solved, but if the Republicans can’t even acknowledge basic facts about the impact that the Bush Tax Cuts have had on the economy, it’s hard to take their solutions seriously. I can’t say I’m surprised, but once again, Republicans aren’t letting the facts get in the way of their opinions.”

Below is a video of U.S. Rep. Peters debating his amendment with the Republicans on the House floor.

The Peters Amendment would not have altered H.R. 3582 in any functional manner, it simply would had added the following factual findings section:

(1)  On January 8, 2003, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that President Bush believed that the tax cut package enacted in 2001 and expanded in 2003 would “create additional revenues for the federal government and pay for itself.”
(2)  Before the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were enacted, the Congressional Budget Office projected gradually rising surpluses, from 2.7% of gross domestic product in 2001 to 5.3% of gross domestic product by 2011, with the federal government operating debt free by 2009.
(3)  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 have added over $2 trillion to budget deficits from 2002-2011.
(4)  Despite signing the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 into law, President George W. Bush’s administration had, according to the Wall Street Journal, “the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records” in 1939.
(5)  From 2001 to 2009, gross domestic product grew at the slowest pace for any eight-year span since 1953.
(6)  Median household income declined during the Bush Administration for the first time since 1967, when this data began to be tracked. 

###