George W. Bush: I Wish They Weren't Called The Bush Tax Cuts

4/10/2012 @ 9:10AM 

 

 

Former U.S. President George W. Bush called for pro-growth tax policies to create a more robust private sector Tuesday morning in a rare public appearance.

Growing the public sector is easy, Bush said, “just raise taxes.” Supporting private-sector growth is more challenging the former commander-in-chief said, and requires leaving more capital in the hands of job creators.

“I wish they weren’t called the ‘Bush tax cuts’,” he said, surmising that they would be less likely to be raised if someone else’s name was attached.

“Much of the public debate is about our balance sheet…or entitlements,” Bush said, but the solution in his view is to focus on private sector growth. ”The pie grows, the debt relative to the pie shrinks and with fiscal discipline you can solve your deficits,” Bush said.

“In life, you’re going to be dealt a hand you don’t want to play,” Bush said. “The question is how are you going to play it?”

Bush, who has made sparing public appearances since leaving office, was speaking at the New York Historical Society for the George W. Bush Presidential Center’s conference on “Tax Policies For 4% Growth.”(Forbes is the event’s media sponsor).

“I don’t think it’s good for our country to undermine our president and I don’t intend to do so,” Bush said, explaining part of the reason why he has largely stayed out of the limelight until launching the Bush Institute, which he says is intended to have a “concrete effect.”

The Bush Center’s 4% growth initiative is aimed at finding ways to achieve sustainable, annual growth of 4%, well ahead of the present rate, in large part by focusing on taxes.

James Glassman, founding executive director of the George W. Bush Institute argued that tax policy is “the most powerful” public policy that can incentivize citizens to work, invest and start new businesses, and that Europeans work less due not to culture, but the marginal growth rate. Moreover, Glassman noted, states without income taxes (or with lower rates than neighbors) are seeing clear competitive advantages in economic growth.

The tax debate has risen to a higher pitch in this election year, with skirmishes over everything from rates on capital gains and dividends to just how much the government takes out of the paycheck of Warren Buffett‘s secretary.

The Bush tax cuts, set to expire at the end of 2012 after being extended in 2010, are a big part of the “fiscal cliff” facing the economy that many fear will result in sharply higher yields on U.S. Treasury debt as investors become more concerned with the country’s financial condition. The current yield on the 10-year note — just over 2% — suggests those concerns remain on the backburner for the moment.

As to whether he misses the presidency, “I really don’t,” Bush said, though he quipped that “it was really inconvenient having to stop at stop lights [on the way to Tuesday's conference]. I guess I miss that.”