2008 CO Senate Debates: on Tax Reform

Bob Schaffer: Cutting taxes increased revenue & unleashed economic growth

SCHAFFER: You’re correct that under Republican leadership, deficits grew, and I think it has mainly been a function of war. However, I was in Congress for six years. I got elected 1996; I left in 2002. During those years, we did balance the budget. We did it by trimming the rate of growth in spending, but more than anything else, the tax cuts that we helped pushed forward, which applied to middle class households. Mark Udall likes to talk about it as tax cuts for the rich--but we actually grew the economy faster than had been projected--we actually increased the amount of revenue coming to the federal government while we were slowing down the rate of growth in spending and reforming on the regulatory side. Welfare reform, for example, & other reforms, helped unleash the productivity of the economy. We need to do that again.