Fiscal 2005 YTD Receipts 1,369,366
Fiscal 2001 YTD Receipts 1,378,023
Fiscal 2005 YTD Outlays 1,641,597
Fiscal 2001 YTD Outlays 1,240,939
Source: http://fms.treas.gov/mts/index.html
It's even worse if you correct for inflation. The following graph shows the trailing 3-month totals of receipts, outlays, and balances since 1998:
The actual numbers and sources can be found at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/mts.html. Following are a few of those numbers:
Receipts for Mar-May 1999 in 2004 dollars: $564.0 billion
Receipts for Mar-May 2005 in 2004 dollars: $563.2 billion
Receipts for Jun 98-May 99 in 2004 dollars: $2045.5 billion
Receipts for Jun 04-May 05 in 2004 dollars: $2036.7 billion
Outlays for Jun 98-May 99 in 2004 dollars: $1937.2 billion
Outlays for Jun 04-May 05 in 2004 dollars: $2371.8 billion
As can be seen, the "surging" tax revenues mentioned by the article, when corrected for inflation, are slightly below where they were six years ago, in 1999. Outlays, on the other hand, have arguably "surged", going up by over 22 percent in real terms. Following are the numbers for just individual income tax receipts:
Individual Income Tax Receipts for Mar-May 1999 in 2004 dollars: $280.2 billion
Individual Income Tax Receipts for Mar-May 2005 in 2004 dollars: $243.1 billion
Individual Income Tax Receipts for Jun 98-May 99 in 2004 dollars: $991.6 billion
Individual Income Tax Receipts for Jun 04-May 05 in 2004 dollars: $900.2 billion
As can be seen, real individual income tax receipts are still well below their 1999 levels. Hence, if "working" means increasing the debt that we leave to our children then, yes, the tax cuts are definitely working.