$2 billion borrowed for tax cuts, so far

• Eddie
• 12 years ago
• Categories: budget 2010, tax

Remember National’s ‘fiscally neutral’ tax cuts? Turns out they’ve cost $2 billion in their first 18 months (previously, we only knew they had cost $1.1 billion in their first 9 months). Without those reckless tax cuts, we wouldn’t be facing zero budgets.

Now, the Right’s story changes, of course. They were never meant to be fiscally neutral, they were stimulus spending – right, because everyone knows the way to stimulate an economy is to up tax on spending and cut it for the rich, those most likely to save. In fact, Treasury said the tax cuts would increase growth by 0.9% over ten years – an immeasurably small amount.