Could it be that these are the same people who continue to lie about how tax cuts drain the treasury, ignoring the fact that lower tax RATES have INCREASED tax revenues?You mean the **people** who published this column today:
Don't Feed the Beast: Bush Should End This Tax Cut MythNot once in the article does the author admit that the tax cuts increased government revenues and neither does he deny it. The argument is built on a specious association between tax cuts and increased spending. That's called apples and oranges, or bad logic. Or cheap-ass (com)Post propoganda.
That article inadvertently gives the game away here:
"Well, now it has been discredited. Rauch cites William Niskanen, an economist who worked in the Reagan White House and now chairs the Cato Institute. Niskanen has crunched the numbers between 1981 and 2005, testing for a relationship between tax cuts and government spending, and controlling for levels of unemployment, since these affect spending and taxes independently. Niskanen's result punctures his own party's dogma. Tax cuts are associated with increases in government spending. The best strategy for forcing cuts in government is actually to raise taxes."
Well, DUH ... the two largest tax cuts in the past 30 years, under Reagan Bush coincided with strong growth that led to revenue increases... the tax increase of 1990 kept us in a recession, and the tax increase under Clinton in 1993 also slowed the economy and revenue increases.
Even George Gilder, tax-cutting supply-sider to the max, discovered a unique fact that nails it once and for all: The Government with the largest growth in last 50 years (1950-2000) was the Government of ... Hong Kong, the lowest tax regime on the planet. Low taxes lead to grwoth and the growth leads to higher revenues.
IF WE WANT THE TAX BASE AND ECONOMY OF A THIRD WORLD HELL_HOLE, INCREASE TAXES.
IF WE WANT A GOVERNMENT THAT CAN PAY FOR ITSELF LONG-TERM, LOWER TAXES.