For the fifth year in a row, the Bush budget cuts city core services to pay for wealthy tax breaks. And once again, the mayor's requests were not funded.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The current administration has made the decision to cut dollars going for community development block grants, for various incentives to bring cities back.
It's wasteful spending like this that not only forces tax increases and cuts in vital services... but also really make you wonder: who is City Hall looking out for?
You have to starve the Beast. That's one of the most important things about tax cuts. If you leave the money in Washington, it's going to be spent.
There are a lot of things you can say about the Bush tax cuts, but you can't say they didn't work.
When I became mayor of New York City, I had a $2.4 billion deficit. And everybody wanted me to raise taxes. I said, 'If I raise taxes, I'll drive people out of New York City, and then I'll be raising taxes again.' So what I did was I cut expenses by 15 percent.
Sadly, the President's budget proposal for the upcoming year once again puts cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans over addressing our country's severe fiscal problems.
Once again, we see the Bush administration paying for its failed policies by cutting funds to vital public services and jeopardizing more American jobs.
The budget does not adequately fund important domestic programs, promotes tax cuts to the detriment of other priorities and does little to put our nation's fiscal house in order.
In a very weak economy, when you say 'cut government spending,' what you mean is you're laying off school teachers and you're de-funding various programs that put money into the economy. This means you have more unemployed people that then draw unemployment benefits and don't pay taxes.
Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country.