Politics: J'accuse!

[Duplicity]

Originally posted by bilmore
A tax cut, and higher revenues? How could that be?

Intentionally or unintentionally, you are echoing Jonah Goldberg, so it's only right to post Yglesias' debunking of him:

Matthew Yglesias, in TAPPED

LESS TAXES, MORE MONEY. Over in The Corner Jonah Goldberg finds vindication for Republican economic dogma:

• How strange. We've cut taxes but revenues are increasing.

The great danger of blogging is that readers may see the links, but not actually click on them. Here's what Jonathan Weisman's article in The Washington Post says:

• Smaller-than-expected tax refunds and rising individual tax receipts will pare back federal borrowing significantly for the first half of this year and could reduce the $521 billion deficit projected for the fiscal year by as much as $100 billion, Treasury and congressional budget officials said yesterday. . . .
  
  All of this indicates that the improving economy is beginning to slow a three-year slide in overall tax receipts.

In other words, revenue isn't increasing. Rather, it's falling more slowly than it has in the recent past. Actual revenue is higher than previous projections of revenue for this year, but not higher than actual revenue from the previous year. Either way, tax cut fueled growth can't possibly fix America's budgetary problems, given the current spending trends. As you'll see at the bottom of this page, under the Bush administration spending has increased not just in absolute terms, but as a proportion of GDP. That means revenue, too, needs to grow, not just in absolute terms, but as a proportion of GDP.