Jack Reed: “yesterday the President's Council of Economic Advisers released a report claiming that the Bush tax cuts are responsible…”

“yesterday the President's Council of Economic Advisers released a report claiming that the Bush tax cuts are responsible for keeping the recession more mild than it otherwise would be. They claim that the already passed tax cut has raised prospects for a solid recovery and that by the end of this year there will be 800,000 more jobs than there otherwise would have been. The report of the Council of Economic Advisers is somewhat curious. It is obviously self-serving. It does make a fundamental mistake. It tries to suggest that the Bush tax cut, which centered on the reduction of income tax rates principally benefiting the highest paid and most affluent Americans, is the cause of the slight stimulus we have seen over the last few months when in fact, to be honest about it, it has been the proposed rebates championed initially by the Democrats, not part of the initial Bush proposal, that has provided some stimulus effect over the last several months. That goes to the nature of, first, a rebate directly to a whole host of Americans across a broad income range. Those rebates typically were spent, and that seems to be the case in this situation. The reality of the Bush tax proposals is that, first, they were not effective this year. Much of his tax cut proposal does not become effective until the following fiscal year. As a result, to make claims that his tax concept is a part of this stimulus effect is rather suspicious on its face.”