The point of bundling in one bill was that extending to permanence the 2017 tax level alone would have been met with an avalanche of deficit explosion coverage. It is still getting that coverage, but the spending stuff is intended to combat it.
Examine the math. Expiring the 2017 tax levels and having them rise back to previous levels is going to add to over $400B per year. X10 is $4T. That’s pure math. Pre Laffer curve stuff.
Before you choose to worship at the Laffer curve altar, do the analysis yourself. Don’t go looking for some other text that says things, because someone else said something. Go get the tax revenue numbers from 1970s and 1980s — CAREFULLY ADJUST THEM FOR POPULATION GAIN AND INFLATION — and then decide if tax revenue really rose with lower tax rates.
But that’s all somewhat pointless. There is very little in spending cut in the BBB. The DOGE cuts are not in it BECAUSE THEY CANNOT BE IN IT. They are not from discretionary spending. They are in agencies with mandatory spending and they do not qualify for Reconciliation.
There is no solution to the problem. The debt has become too high to fix without society destroying measures, like default on all government instruments and then executing — physically killing — anyone who brings suit to recover whatever loss ($31T) they sustain from their government bond holdings having been confiscated.
Not time to hang the crepe yet.
In fiscal year 2022, federal tax revenues reached a record-high of $4.9 trillion – $1.6 trillion or 48 percent higher than when the Trump tax cuts were passed and $884 billion higher than CBO’s projections for 2022.
Corporate tax revenues reached a record-high of $425 billion – $128 billion or 43 percent higher than when the Trump tax cuts were passed and $72 billion higher than CBO’s projections for 2022.
Individual tax revenues reached a record-high of $2.6 trillion – over $1 trillion or 66 percent higher than when the Trump tax cuts were passed and $642 billion higher than CBO’s projections for 2022.
On average, revenues increased $205 billion per year over CBO’s projections.
In the first two years after passage of the Trump tax cuts, GDP growth was a full percentage point higher than CBO’s pre-TCJA forecast.
According to the White House Office of Management and Budget, every additional one percent of sustained GDP growth will result in $600 billion in new revenues over 5 years and $2.8 trillion over 10 years.
Following passage of the Trump tax cuts…
Real median household income rose by $5,000 – a bigger increase in just two years than in the prior eight years combined.
Wages increased 4.9 percent, the fastest two-year growth in real wages in 20 years.
The poverty rate and unemployment rate reached their lowest levels in 50 years, with all-time lows in unemployment among African American and Hispanic workers, and those without a high-school degree.
The bottom 20 percent of earners saw their federal tax rate fall to its lowest level in 40 years.
Americans earning under $100,000 received an average tax cut of 16 percent.
The share of taxes paid by the Top 1% of households increased while the tax burden paid by lower income earners decreased.