Lunch Time,

Of course its speculation. That was what the question was: "What might work instead of a tax cut?" However, that particular speculation has history to suggest it's likely effectiveness. That is what happened in the US during the 50's, when we invested massively in the freeway system and in public universities. I think it's reasonable to conclude that those investments paid off. It happened in Europe, under the Marshall Plan. It happened in Japan, under it's near socialist support for the corporations there. There is also well understood math that explains the stimultive effect.

Now, the Bush tax cut plan, that is also speculation. However, it does not have history to support it. We have had several instances of tax cuts to study, in the 60's, the 80's, and the most recent one in Bush's tenure. Economists largely agree that across the board tax cuts don't create much stimulus. 10 Nobel Prize winning economists and 400 others signed a public letter to Bush criticising this plan as being unlikely to stimulate growth and dangerous for the country. If tax cuts worked, the community of economists would know this and support it. Instead, they have done the math, and realize that is likely to not work, and to have severe negative effects down the road.

The Bush plan is fantasy, and dangerous fantasy at that. Sure, it's popular, but popularity has little to do with reality.

The risk with Bush (and I am no fan of the democrats) is that he has a set of beliefs that he is willing to follow that are not supportable by fact. He is not a bad man, but he is demonstrably ignorant and shuts out people who are knowledgable who disagree with his beliefs. That is dangerous behavior for an executive. It is probably why his business management efforts were less than spectacular.

George Bush Senior was a much better executive, but ran into the downturn in the business cycle. That was unfortunate. I respected (and voted for) that man. I don't respect his son.

Oh, and one more question for the democrat bashers: If Clinton and the dem's were the cause of the current recession, how come the recession didn't start after his first term? If Reagan was so good for the economy, why did Bush Sr have to fight a recession during his term?

Could it be that business cycles are not particulary controllable by the president, regardless of his party? Nah, that would simply agree with the facts.

Facts? I don't recall anyone arguing about the facts, all the arguments have been about opinions. Facts were never disputed in any of the aforementioned diatribes. You know whats really wrong with REPUBLICANS/ DEMOCRATS ( insert as desired) you just tell them anything!
Isn't it great to be an American!