Eight years of Bush tax cuts have been thoroughly analyzed and the cuts failed every stated goal, not just a little but catastrophically.

The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com states that helping low income groups does the best to stimulate the economy. The top two best tax dollar investments are Food Stamps, returning $1.73 for every $1 and Unemployment Benefits, returning $1.63 to the taxpayer. Number three on the list is infrastructure spending, things like roads that enable commerce and ensure public safety return $1.59. (How many Coos County residents have complained about the state of their roads since Kevin gutted the road department?)

Alternatively, tax cuts like the one given to Oregon Resources Corporation or extending the Bush tax cuts return only .31 costing the public almost seventy cents on the dollar! Would this explain why local officials voting in favor of the abatement wouldn’t show any math to back up their decision? Is it possible they don’t want their constituents to know what little regard they have for public money?

Five years of abatement to ORC are estimated to generate as much as $2.5M in taxes if the firm was not getting abatement. If the $2.5M were spent to provide food stamps, for example, to Coos County citizens the local economy would see their investment back plus a gain for a total $4,325,000 almost immediately. Instead, the net effect will be a loss to the local economy of $1.75M.

Put another way, the price of fifty $45,000 a year jobs at ORC cost to the citizens is $35,000 per job. All this to help out a resource extraction industry paying its top five management staff in excess of $660,000 a year.

Enterprise zones do not create jobs or stimulate the economy. Since the creation of the e-zones in Coos County unemployment has doubled and outpaces the state average by 4pts. Local citizens should push to cancel the enterprise zones in the County because not only do they not work, they are very, very expensive.