Clark said Bush's tax cuts have made minority communities poorer, furthering their already unstable economic situation

Excerpt from Arkansas Gazette,
Clark lets positions be known,
October 6, 2003.

Clark, who has charged ahead of his rivals for the Democratic nomination in national polls, is expected to issue additional economic-policy proposals soon. He said "ordinary Americans" need to receive a greater share of the nation's economic prosperity. "It is ordinary men and women who have made the wealth of this country, and they deserve more of the benefit of it," he said.

He added: "We're going to look at the tax code. We're going to look at other things."

Clark has already called for taking back tax cuts that those making more than $200,000 a year have received since President Bush took office in 2001 and using the money saved - $100 billion over two years - to fund a variety of job-creation initiatives, including projects related to homeland security.

Let me offer some support for his assertion. The 1991 Gulf War coalition had troops from 32 countries. Sharing the decision to drive the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait by force led to sharing the costs. The total cost of the Gulf War was about $60 billion. The United States paid roughly $6 billion of that total. The rest was paid by our allies.

Twelve years later, the decision to attack Iraq was not shared. Rather than presenting the international community with a problem and asking its assistance in helping to resolve it, the United States government presented the solution and asked for countries to back it. We refused to share the decision, and our allies are refusing to share the costs. The current $87 billion request before Congress, on top of the $79 billion already approved by Congress would bring the cost - so far - to $166 billion dollars paid by the United States taxpayers.

"There's a lot of buzz about General Clark now," Mr. Spahn said. "He combines in one package the attributes of several other candidates. He's got the Southern base of John Edwards, the outsider status of Howard Dean and a military record that trumps John Kerry."

Mr. Morton, recently host to a dinner with Jordan Kerner, a producer, for General Clark, said: "Simply put, I was blown away by the man. He's pro-choice, pro-affirmative action. He's fiscally responsible. He wants to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the rich, which I have no problem with and every affluent person I spoke to has no problem with.

And this administration comes in with an ideology that blocks its ability to see, articulate, and resolve those problems. It's an ideology that's a sharpened sort of right-wing Republican party ideology. It has no real intellectual base to it. It's just the ideology of a party. By intellectual base, I'm talking first, trickle-down economics. No reputable economist stands up and says, "Trickle down economics really works." Because we know the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $100,000 a year and less is much higher than the marginal propensity to consume of people who are making $350,000 a year and more.

So therefore when you say you're going to give money to the rich so they'll make jobs for the poor -- that's not a very efficient way of producing jobs in the American economy. We know that, all things being equal, that the lower the tax rate at the margin, the greater the incentive to earn the extra dollar. But we also know -- it's just human nature to figure that out -- that in a society where you've got a lot of people that are struggling to pay the electricity bill and the telephone bill and you've got a few people who don't care what the electricity and telephone bill is, that the few people who don't care about these things ought to pay a higher proportion of their income to help the rest of the country than the people who are struggling with the necessities in life.

Others — including Gen. Clark, Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, John Edwards of North Carolina, and Bob Graham of Florida — said only tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be reversed. They said full repeal would increase the tax bills of already-struggling working families.

My Job Creation Plan will directly fund job creation in a fiscally responsible way. Fiscal discipline requires not only reducing the deficit. It requires moving money from areas where it isn't advancing national goals, and directing it to areas where it is. So I will reduce the tax cuts Mr. Bush gave the richest households - those making more than $200,000 a year, and directs that money to three job-creating funds.

. . .

Second: Another $40 billion will go to the State and Local Tax Rebate Fund. Mr. Bush's tax cuts have had a brutal effect on state governments. In some states, their tax code is linked directly to the federal tax code, so a tax cut at the federal level translates into automatic tax cuts at the state level. But the states, unlike the federal government, must balance their budgets - so the Bush tax cuts force state budget cuts in areas such as education and health - even in prisons. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has concluded that state budget cuts could push nearly 2 million people off Medicaid - denying poor mothers the chance to take a sick baby to the doctor.

My plan will give $20 billion to states to help keep tuition increases down and help state and local government train workers for new jobs.

Another ten billion will go to states to help them meet the increasing cost of health care.

The final ten billion will help states fund important jobs in law enforcement, corrections and social services.

Finally, my plan will set aside $20 billion over two years for Tax Incentives for Job Creation. Businesses are not hiring new employees even though the economy is growing, partly because the growth is weak and businesses aren't sure it will last. I'm proposing a new job creation tax credit that will reduce the cost for a business to hire a new employee. The plan will offer up to $5,000 tax credit for each additional full-time employee any business hires in 2004 and 2005. The plan will also encourage small and medium-sized businesses to invest in new equipment by allowing these firms to write-off up to $150,000 in investments over the next two years.

Taxes are something that you want to have as little of as possible, but you need as much revenue as necessary to meet people's needs for services.