Politics

UNIQUE LINK – REPUBLICANS NEED TO REGAIN CREDIBILITY WITH FISCAL CONSERVATIVES TO WIN THE 2008 ELECTION - LUCKILY, BUSH IS HOLDING THE LINE ON DEMOCRATIC SPENDING BILLS. THE PLAN ENDS THIS BY HAVING BUSH SIGN OFF ON AN INCREASE IN FOREIGN AID SPENDING RUINING ANY CHANCE THE REPUBLICANS HAVE OF WINNING THE ELECTION.

Bloomberg News - July 9, 2007 ["Bush, Democrats Seek `Very Big Fight' With Each Other on Budget", http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLzu3Qp8KyRE]

President George W. Bush and congressional Democrats are headed for their first showdown over the federal budget. For both sides, more than money is at stake. Bush, who only vetoed one piece of legislation passed by the Republican Congress in his first six years in office, is now threatening to reject almost every spending bill sent to him by the Democratic-controlled Congress unless lawmakers abandon plans to spend $23 billion more than he requested. While the amount involved is less than 1 percent of the $2.9 trillion federal budget, the political stakes are greater. A little more than 16 months before the 2008 elections, Democrats and Republicans alike figure a fight may be in their interests. ``It's a very big fight over a fairly small sum of money,'' says Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonpartisan group that advocates a balanced budget. ``It has a lot of political significance in terms of the signals being sent.'' Bush and the Republicans, stung by criticism that they presided over a surge in government spending, are looking to rehabilitate themselves among core supporters by holding the line on the budget. Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to show they can deliver on promises to shore up education, health care and a host of other initiatives. More Than Expected Other consequences might only become clear over time. The additional spending proposed by the Democrats would barely affect a deficit the Congressional Budget Office says might exceed $220 billion next year, though it may end up costing more than expected if it causes agency budgets to grow faster over time. Bush, 61, has pledged to put the budget on course to be balanced by 2012. The deficit in 2006 was $248 billion. Unlike other measures such as the immigration legislation that died last month in the Senate, the annual spending bills must pass to keep the government's doors open. And neither Bush nor the Democrats are eager for a repeat of the budget fights of 1995, when the federal government partially shut down twice after President Bill Clinton refused congressional Republicans' demands to pare taxes and spending by hundred of billions of dollars. Still, with both sides spoiling for a fight, there's a chance things could spin out of control. ``This is going to be a very serious showdown,'' says Stephen McMillin, deputy director of Bush's Office of Management and Budget. ``The differences could not be more stark.'' `A Hell of a Difference' House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, dismisses the administration's veto threats. His party's budget, he says, will ``make a hell of a difference in people's lives, but it has virtually no difference on the deficit.'' The fight will unfold during the coming months as Democrats begin sending Bush the 12 annual spending bills, and may consume much of the rest of this year's legislative agenda. It will play out at the margins of the federal budget, as the vast majority of spending has become politically all but untouchable. Defense and homeland-security spending, entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, and interest payments on the national debt now consume more than 80 percent of the government budget. The remainder pays for domestic programs ranging from the space program to national parks and must be approved annually by Congress. Bush submitted a plan in February that would cut spending on those programs by 0.3 percent, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate. Falling Short Democrats say the proposal falls short of what's needed just to maintain current services, and want to spend 5 percent more, with much of the increase slated for education, veterans and health-care programs. Democrats say the proposed increase is the minimum needed to shore up programs eroded by a dozen years of Republican budgets. ``We're not making humungous new investments,'' says Obey, 68. ``I've never had anybody in my district say, `Why don't you guys get your act together and cut cancer research?''' The Republicans, he says, are attempting to block the new spending because they've ``blown the budget sky-high and now are looking for a way on the cheap to recover their image.''

Continued… Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Fiscal Discipline)

Continued…

Since Bush took office in 2001, federal spending has increased 32 percent, and the budget is now equivalent to 20.3 percent of gross domestic product, the most since 1996. Pet Projects The Republicans' control of Congress, which ended in November, was marked by an explosion in pet-project spending, the creation of a costly prescription-drug entitlement program and a string of budget deficits that peaked at $413 billion in 2004. House Minority Leader John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, says there's a need for the party to re-establish its credibility with fiscal conservatives. ``For Republicans, who have a tarnished fiscal- responsibility image in the last election, it gives us an opportunity to show people that we really are who we said we are,'' Boehner, 57, said in an interview. ``We're here for a smaller, less costly and more accountable government.'' Each side has taken steps that may escalate the battle. The Bush administration replaced OMB Director Rob Portman, who had good relations with Democrats, with a former congressman from Iowa, Jim Nussle, 47, who has a reputation for partisan combativeness; he once appeared on the floor of the House with a paper bag over his head to protest an ethics scandal involving Democrats. `Belly-Bumping' Obey called Nussle's appointment to the budget job an ``act of confrontation, saying the administration is replacing someone ``who at least talks the moderation game with someone who has been a belly-bumping, hard-line conservative for a long time. Senate Democrats have raised the specter of difficult confirmation hearings for Nussle. ``A number of members have spoken with me about their very real concerns about his nomination,'' says Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, 59, a North Dakota Democrat. They've ``expressed serious reservations about Mr. Nussle's reputation for confrontation.'' Conrad said in a statement July 5 that he ``anticipates'' that Nussle's confirmation hearings will take place this month. Sean Kevelighan, the OMB spokesman, said last week that Nussle wouldn't be available for comment until he is confirmed. In his weekly radio address July 7, Bush urged Congress to confirm Nussle, who he said would ``be a strong advocate for protecting our tax dollars here in Washington. Bush also renewed his threat to veto any appropriations measure that contains the ``failed tax-and-spend policies of the past. Policy Changes The Democrats, meanwhile, have laced the spending bills with policy changes that they know the White House won't accept. On June 21, one day after Bush vetoed legislation expanding federal support of embryonic stem-cell research, Democrats attached similar provisions to a health-care spending bill. They ignored his promises to veto any legislation loosening federal abortion restrictions, passing a foreign-aid spending bill that would allow the government to provide contraceptives to organizations that actively support abortion rights. Other changes would relax trade restrictions with Cuba and extend employment benefits to homosexual partners of federal employees. Each has drawn a separate veto threat. Bush and the Republicans ``should hope'' the Democrats stoke the conflict even more, says Patrick Toomey, a former Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who heads the Club for Growth, a Washington-based group that backs small-government candidates. ``The only way Republicans are going to make progress this year ``is if the president vetoes the bills and has high- profile fights over spending, he says. ``It's very, very important that they have this fight.''

Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Fiscal Discipline)

IMPACT –

1) A REPUBLICAN VICTORY IS KEY TO EXTEND BUSH’S ’01 AND ’03 TAX CUTS

Wall Street Journal - March 29, 2007 [DEBORAH SOLOMON, http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB117513304025552771.html]

WASHINGTON -- In the Republican presidential race, appeals to economic conservatives could prove crucial, as all three leading candidates face doubts from social conservatives.

The bidding begins in earnest today, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney becomes the first major candidate in the field to unveil a tax-cut plan, a staple of Republican primary debates since Ronald Reagan transformed the party's fiscal priorities in the 1980 campaign.

That comes as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani this week gained the endorsement of publisher Steve Forbes, who won an enduring following among the party's economic base when he campaigned for president on a flat-tax platform in 1996.

The party's third top-tier candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, appears to have largely written off the most ardent antitax advocates, just as he has accepted he'll never attract some leaders of the religious right. He alone among the trio has rejected full repeal of the estate tax, which conservatives refer to as the "death tax." And he alone will skip the annual economic meeting of the Club for Growth, a conservative economic advocacy group, that opens today in Palm Beach, Fla. Aides say he will be in Iraq.

Mr. Romney will use the platform to announce a new tax plan that will include marginal-tax-rate cuts, a corporate-rate cut and savings incentives, according to a person close to the Romney campaign.

The competition for the mantle of top tax cutter could be crucial if antiabortion and other activists seek another champion, as many are threatening to do. "Giuliani has to be pro tax cuts....It is the only thing that would even keep him in the race," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican strategist. The candidate has a record of endorsing gun control, gay rights and abortion rights. "If he went south on taxes, that would be the absolute ending," Mr. Fabrizio said.

On some issues, the three leading candidates agree. They all argue that taxes should be kept low and that President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be extended. All three refer often to President Reagan and his theory of supply-side economics, which holds that tax cuts stimulate the economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have attacked the Bush tax cuts, and some have suggested rolling at least part of them back to pay for other priorities. John Edwards, for instance, has called for rescinding the tax breaks for upper-income individuals in order to fund universal health care.

Influential conservative groups are beginning to agitate for additional tax cuts from Republicans and broad tax overhauls as the price for their endorsement. "In 2008, a successful Republican campaign will have to say, 'I'm not going to let the taxes go up, and here's my front-and-center tax cut that excites people,"' said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, which has asked all the candidates to sign a pledge vowing not to raise taxes. Mr. Romney is so far the only one of the main candidates to do so.

"I really believe Gov. Romney will be the pro-growth, tax-cutting candidate in this race," said Cesar Conda, an adviser to Mr. Romney and a former domestic-policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In addition to Mr. Conda, Mr. Romney has assembled several of President Bush's former advisers and chief tax cutters, including Glenn Hubbard, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers during Mr. Bush's first term, and N. Gregory Mankiw, who succeeded Mr. Hubbard.

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Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Fiscal Discipline)

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But Mr. Romney has some troubles with economic conservatives. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, gave Mr. Romney a "C" grade on his fiscal policy as governor, saying he increased state fees and proposed corporate-tax increases. "We've got grave reservations about the health-care plan that he helped to pass in Massachusetts," says Pat Toomey, head of the Club for Growth.

Many tax cutters may lean to Mr. Giuliani, who has been reminding audiences that he cut or eliminated taxes 23 times while mayor of New York. "If you lower taxes, and you do it intelligently, and you do it in a planned way, and you do it with a little bit of prediction in mind...you actually collect more money than if you raise taxes," Mr. Giuliani said in a speech to Stanford University's Hoover Institution last month.

His economic adviser, Michael Boskin of Hoover, says Mr. Giuliani is "a pro-growth fiscal conservative" who helped revive New York City's economy and "turned a large $2.3 billion deficit into a large surplus."

Mr. McCain has long had an uneasy relationship with the party's tax-cutting wing. Although he has been a voice for fiscal restraint, his emphasis has been more on curbing deficits and containing spending. One of his signature issues in the Senate has been attacking pork-barrel spending. Mr. McCain's chief advisers hew more from the deficit-hawk wing of the Republican Party, including two former heads of the Congressional Budget Office: Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Dan Crippen.

In the 2000 campaign, Sen. McCain offered his own tax-cut proposals and attacked then-Gov. Bush's larger proposals as reckless. After Mr. Bush became president, Mr. McCain cast votes against tax-cut proposals in 2001 and 2003, arguing that they benefited the rich over the middle class, and that the country needed to be spending more money on military readiness.

"If you want to be consistent with the Republican goals of keeping the private sector free of the burden of a large government, our biggest threat today is future spending," says an adviser to Mr. McCain. "Every dollar you spend shows up in a tax increase down the road. The best tax cutter in the party today is the one who would keep spending down."

A candidate once again, Mr. McCain is now making a nod to the tax cutters. He says he now supports extending the Bush tax cuts when they expire in 2010, and he is considering proposing some type of tax overhaul, which could include revenue-neutral tax cuts. And while he doesn't support repealing the estate tax, an adviser said he is in favor of making it less burdensome so that it only affects those of "extraordinary wealth."

2) THE DIVIDEND TAX CUTS OF 2003 SAVED THE US ECONOMY FROM GOING INTO DECLINE – THEY MUST BE EXTENDED

NewsMax December 5th, 2006 [David Patten, “Steve Forbes: Tax Cuts Saved the Economy,” http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/4/180730.shtml?s=lh]

When Steve Forbes speaks about money, people listen. Not only is he editor in chief of the nation's leading business magazine, Forbes, he has also become the nation's evangelist for free market policies, notably tax cuts and a "flat" income tax. And Forbes is a former presidential candidate, having made bids for the GOP nomination in 1996 and 2000. Though Forbes didn't win in either year, his agenda may have "rubbed off" on the Republican platform. President Bush, for instance, has fully embraced the view that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Bush proposed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which Congress passed. It will cut taxes by an estimated $1.3 trillion by 2010. Another bill in 2003 cut taxes a further $60 billion a year, focusing on dividends and capital gains taxes. So far, the effects have been clear. In the first 33 months after Bush signed the 2003 tax bill, the American economy increased by 20 percent and nearly 5.3 million new jobs were created. Over the first half of this year, our economy grew at a 4.1 percent annual rate, faster than any other major industrialized nation, and tax receipts actually rose $206 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year. Recently, NewsMax chatted with Steve Forbes. Forbes made it crystal clear that the Bush tax cuts saved the American economy, noting economic growth over the last four years "exceeds the entire size of the Chinese economy."

Continued…

Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Fiscal Discipline)

Continued…

Back to Republican Roots Today, in the wake of the Republican loss of both Houses of Congress, Forbes argues that Republicans need to rediscover their Reaganite roots if they want to regain control of Washington. In a wide-ranging interview, Forbes tackled other issues confronting Americans today: • The looming health-care crisis. He is strongly in favor of "health savings accounts," which help individuals save for future medical and retiree health expenses on a tax-free basis. • A possible White House win by "interventionist" Hillary Clinton. "One must never underestimate the Clintons." • The economy. He says the Fed "has too much money out there," proposes that gold prices be used to monitor monetary policy, and believes the housing bust will be "painful but short-lived." An Agitator in the Making As for his own presidential ambitions, Forbes said he'll stay out of the race in 2008. Instead he plans on remaining an "agitator" for the free-market policies he espouses. Who among the flock of GOP candidates will he support in 2008? At this point, he tells NewsMax that none of the potential 2008 candidates for the White House "stands out." NewsMax: When you ran for president, you had a very straightforward message: tax cuts, fiscal responsibility. It seems with the Bush administration we have gotten more of a half and half deal. Forbes: The big tax cuts of 2003 really enabled the economy to go from a 1 percent stagnant, semi-stagnant economy to the vigorous one we have today. It's not fully appreciated, because the main media more or less ignore it, but the growth in the American economy during the last four years exceeds the entire size of the Chinese economy. Obviously China is growing rapidly from an extremely small base. And so the tax cuts of 2003 were vastly superior, much more powerful than the ones of 2001. The nation has done very well with those tax cuts.

3) ECONOMIC DOWNTURN CAUSES WORLD WAR III

Mead, Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, 1998 [Walter Russel, LOS ANGELES TIMES, August 23 p. online. (MHDRG/D369)]

Forget suicide car bombers and Afghan fanatics. It's the financial markets, not the terrorist training camps that pose the biggest immediate threat to world peace. How can this be? Think about the mother of all global meltdowns: the Great Depression that started in 1929. U.S. stocks began to collapse in October, staged a rally, then the market headed south big time. At the bottom, the Dow Jones industrial average had lost 90% of its value. Wages plummeted, thousands of banks and brokerages went bankrupt, millions of people lost their jobs. There were similar horror stories worldwide. But the biggest impact of the Depression on the United States--and on world history--wasn't money. It was blood: World War II, to be exact. The Depression brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, undermined the ability of moderates to oppose Joseph Stalin's power in Russia, and convinced the Japanese military that the country had no choice but to build an Asian empire, even if that meant war with the United States and Britain. That's the thing about depressions. They aren't just bad for your 401(k). Let the world economy crash far enough, and the rules change. We stop playing "The Price is Right" and start up a new round of "Saving Private Ryan."

Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Foreign Policy)

THE 2008 ELECTIONS WILL BE DECIDED BY TWO KEY ISSUES: FIGHTING TERRORISM AND GETTING OUT OF IRAQ. THE PROBLEM IS THAT REPUBLICANS ARE ONLY ADDRESSING THE THREAT OF TERRORISM WHILE DEMOCRATS ARE SOLELY FOCUSED ON ADDRESSING IRAQ. THE FIRST PARTY TO ADDRESS BOTH ISSUES WILL WIN THE ELECTION

LA Times - July 29, 2007 ["Foreign policy is central in 2008 presidential races", http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-iraqviews29jul29,1,3094405,full.story?coll=la-politics-campaign]

WASHINGTON — It's easy to tell the difference between the two parties on foreign policy in this presidential campaign. The Democrats all want to talk about getting out of Iraq, but not so much about Al Qaeda or terrorism. The Republicans all want to talk about terrorism, but not so much about Iraq. Although fireworks erupted last week among the leading Democratic candidates, those differences are narrow compared with the chasm between the two parties' worldviews, one focused on battling the threat of radical Islam, the other on ending the war. The problem each party faces, polls show, is that most Americans want answers to both questions, not just one or the other. "Foreign policy is playing a role in this campaign unlike any election since the Cold War," said Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton administration official who heads a new centrist think tank in Washington, the Center for New American Security. "The debate so far has made the two parties' positions appear polarized, more than they need to be…. The election may well be decided on foreign policy and national security, but it's all about just two issues: Iraq and the war on terror."

2. REPUBLICANS ARE IN THE MIDST OF A FUNDAMENTAL SHIFT IN IRAQ POLICY IN ORDER TO ADDRESS THE CONCERNS OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC – BUT DEMOCRATS WILL BE ABLE TO DELAY THIS SHIFT FOR A FEW MONTHS

Associated Press – August 1, 2007 [“Democrats warding off GOP shift on war”, http://www.registerguard.com/news/2007/08/01/a2.nat.wardems.0801.p1.php?section=nation_world]

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders are intent on sidetracking bipartisan attempts to change course in Iraq at least until fall, officials said Tuesday, rather than allow nervous Republicans to vote for legislation that lacks a troop withdrawal deadline. Several lawmakers and aides said the goal was to deny members of the GOP rank and file a chance to proclaim their independence from President Bush by voting for a limited measure - after months of backing his policy in an increasingly unpopular war.

3. DEMOCRATS WILL SEIZE ON ____________________ IN ORDER TO SHOW THAT THEY ARE WILLING TO ADDRESS BOTH IRAQ AS WELL AS THE THREAT OF TERRORISM – GIVING THEM THE VICTORY IN ‘08



Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Foreign Policy)

IMPACT –

1) A REPUBLICAN VICTORY IS KEY TO EXTEND BUSH’S ’01 AND ’03 TAX CUTS

Wall Street Journal - March 29, 2007 [DEBORAH SOLOMON, http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB117513304025552771.html]

WASHINGTON -- In the Republican presidential race, appeals to economic conservatives could prove crucial, as all three leading candidates face doubts from social conservatives.

The bidding begins in earnest today, when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney becomes the first major candidate in the field to unveil a tax-cut plan, a staple of Republican primary debates since Ronald Reagan transformed the party's fiscal priorities in the 1980 campaign.

That comes as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani this week gained the endorsement of publisher Steve Forbes, who won an enduring following among the party's economic base when he campaigned for president on a flat-tax platform in 1996.

The party's third top-tier candidate, Arizona Sen. John McCain, appears to have largely written off the most ardent antitax advocates, just as he has accepted he'll never attract some leaders of the religious right. He alone among the trio has rejected full repeal of the estate tax, which conservatives refer to as the "death tax." And he alone will skip the annual economic meeting of the Club for Growth, a conservative economic advocacy group, that opens today in Palm Beach, Fla. Aides say he will be in Iraq.

Mr. Romney will use the platform to announce a new tax plan that will include marginal-tax-rate cuts, a corporate-rate cut and savings incentives, according to a person close to the Romney campaign.

The competition for the mantle of top tax cutter could be crucial if antiabortion and other activists seek another champion, as many are threatening to do. "Giuliani has to be pro tax cuts....It is the only thing that would even keep him in the race," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican strategist. The candidate has a record of endorsing gun control, gay rights and abortion rights. "If he went south on taxes, that would be the absolute ending," Mr. Fabrizio said.

On some issues, the three leading candidates agree. They all argue that taxes should be kept low and that President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts should be extended. All three refer often to President Reagan and his theory of supply-side economics, which holds that tax cuts stimulate the economy.

Democrats, meanwhile, have attacked the Bush tax cuts, and some have suggested rolling at least part of them back to pay for other priorities. John Edwards, for instance, has called for rescinding the tax breaks for upper-income individuals in order to fund universal health care.

Influential conservative groups are beginning to agitate for additional tax cuts from Republicans and broad tax overhauls as the price for their endorsement. "In 2008, a successful Republican campaign will have to say, 'I'm not going to let the taxes go up, and here's my front-and-center tax cut that excites people,"' said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, which has asked all the candidates to sign a pledge vowing not to raise taxes. Mr. Romney is so far the only one of the main candidates to do so.

"I really believe Gov. Romney will be the pro-growth, tax-cutting candidate in this race," said Cesar Conda, an adviser to Mr. Romney and a former domestic-policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

In addition to Mr. Conda, Mr. Romney has assembled several of President Bush's former advisers and chief tax cutters, including Glenn Hubbard, who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers during Mr. Bush's first term, and N. Gregory Mankiw, who succeeded Mr. Hubbard.

Continued…

Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Foreign Policy)

Continued…

But Mr. Romney has some troubles with economic conservatives. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, gave Mr. Romney a "C" grade on his fiscal policy as governor, saying he increased state fees and proposed corporate-tax increases. "We've got grave reservations about the health-care plan that he helped to pass in Massachusetts," says Pat Toomey, head of the Club for Growth.

Many tax cutters may lean to Mr. Giuliani, who has been reminding audiences that he cut or eliminated taxes 23 times while mayor of New York. "If you lower taxes, and you do it intelligently, and you do it in a planned way, and you do it with a little bit of prediction in mind...you actually collect more money than if you raise taxes," Mr. Giuliani said in a speech to Stanford University's Hoover Institution last month.

His economic adviser, Michael Boskin of Hoover, says Mr. Giuliani is "a pro-growth fiscal conservative" who helped revive New York City's economy and "turned a large $2.3 billion deficit into a large surplus."

Mr. McCain has long had an uneasy relationship with the party's tax-cutting wing. Although he has been a voice for fiscal restraint, his emphasis has been more on curbing deficits and containing spending. One of his signature issues in the Senate has been attacking pork-barrel spending. Mr. McCain's chief advisers hew more from the deficit-hawk wing of the Republican Party, including two former heads of the Congressional Budget Office: Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Dan Crippen.

In the 2000 campaign, Sen. McCain offered his own tax-cut proposals and attacked then-Gov. Bush's larger proposals as reckless. After Mr. Bush became president, Mr. McCain cast votes against tax-cut proposals in 2001 and 2003, arguing that they benefited the rich over the middle class, and that the country needed to be spending more money on military readiness.

"If you want to be consistent with the Republican goals of keeping the private sector free of the burden of a large government, our biggest threat today is future spending," says an adviser to Mr. McCain. "Every dollar you spend shows up in a tax increase down the road. The best tax cutter in the party today is the one who would keep spending down."

A candidate once again, Mr. McCain is now making a nod to the tax cutters. He says he now supports extending the Bush tax cuts when they expire in 2010, and he is considering proposing some type of tax overhaul, which could include revenue-neutral tax cuts. And while he doesn't support repealing the estate tax, an adviser said he is in favor of making it less burdensome so that it only affects those of "extraordinary wealth."

2) THE DIVIDEND TAX CUTS OF 2003 SAVED THE US ECONOMY FROM GOING INTO DECLINE – THEY MUST BE EXTENDED

NewsMax December 5th, 2006 [David Patten, “Steve Forbes: Tax Cuts Saved the Economy,” http://www.newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/12/4/180730.shtml?s=lh]

When Steve Forbes speaks about money, people listen. Not only is he editor in chief of the nation's leading business magazine, Forbes, he has also become the nation's evangelist for free market policies, notably tax cuts and a "flat" income tax. And Forbes is a former presidential candidate, having made bids for the GOP nomination in 1996 and 2000. Though Forbes didn't win in either year, his agenda may have "rubbed off" on the Republican platform. President Bush, for instance, has fully embraced the view that tax cuts stimulate the economy. Bush proposed the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, which Congress passed. It will cut taxes by an estimated $1.3 trillion by 2010. Another bill in 2003 cut taxes a further $60 billion a year, focusing on dividends and capital gains taxes. So far, the effects have been clear. In the first 33 months after Bush signed the 2003 tax bill, the American economy increased by 20 percent and nearly 5.3 million new jobs were created. Over the first half of this year, our economy grew at a 4.1 percent annual rate, faster than any other major industrialized nation, and tax receipts actually rose $206 billion in the first nine months of this fiscal year. Recently, NewsMax chatted with Steve Forbes. Forbes made it crystal clear that the Bush tax cuts saved the American economy, noting economic growth over the last four years "exceeds the entire size of the Chinese economy."

Continued…

Elections Disadvantage 1NC Shell (Foreign Policy)

Continued…

Back to Republican Roots Today, in the wake of the Republican loss of both Houses of Congress, Forbes argues that Republicans need to rediscover their Reaganite roots if they want to regain control of Washington. In a wide-ranging interview, Forbes tackled other issues confronting Americans today: • The looming health-care crisis. He is strongly in favor of "health savings accounts," which help individuals save for future medical and retiree health expenses on a tax-free basis. • A possible White House win by "interventionist" Hillary Clinton. "One must never underestimate the Clintons." • The economy. He says the Fed "has too much money out there," proposes that gold prices be used to monitor monetary policy, and believes the housing bust will be "painful but short-lived." An Agitator in the Making As for his own presidential ambitions, Forbes said he'll stay out of the race in 2008. Instead he plans on remaining an "agitator" for the free-market policies he espouses. Who among the flock of GOP candidates will he support in 2008? At this point, he tells NewsMax that none of the potential 2008 candidates for the White House "stands out." NewsMax: When you ran for president, you had a very straightforward message: tax cuts, fiscal responsibility. It seems with the Bush administration we have gotten more of a half and half deal. Forbes: The big tax cuts of 2003 really enabled the economy to go from a 1 percent stagnant, semi-stagnant economy to the vigorous one we have today. It's not fully appreciated, because the main media more or less ignore it, but the growth in the American economy during the last four years exceeds the entire size of the Chinese economy. Obviously China is growing rapidly from an extremely small base. And so the tax cuts of 2003 were vastly superior, much more powerful than the ones of 2001. The nation has done very well with those tax cuts.

3) ECONOMIC DOWNTURN CAUSES WORLD WAR III

Mead, Fellow on the Council of Foreign Relations, 1998 [Walter Russel, LOS ANGELES TIMES, August 23 p. online. (MHDRG/D369)]

Forget suicide car bombers and Afghan fanatics. It's the financial markets, not the terrorist training camps that pose the biggest immediate threat to world peace. How can this be? Think about the mother of all global meltdowns: the Great Depression that started in 1929. U.S. stocks began to collapse in October, staged a rally, then the market headed south big time. At the bottom, the Dow Jones industrial average had lost 90% of its value. Wages plummeted, thousands of banks and brokerages went bankrupt, millions of people lost their jobs. There were similar horror stories worldwide. But the biggest impact of the Depression on the United States--and on world history--wasn't money. It was blood: World War II, to be exact. The Depression brought Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, undermined the ability of moderates to oppose Joseph Stalin's power in Russia, and convinced the Japanese military that the country had no choice but to build an Asian empire, even if that meant war with the United States and Britain. That's the thing about depressions. They aren't just bad for your 401(k). Let the world economy crash far enough, and the rules change. We stop playing "The Price is Right" and start up a new round of "Saving Private Ryan."