The World Around You

I’m so sick of this conservative talking point that cutting taxes somehow magically increases revenue. It’s BOGUS, FALSE, a LIE! There’s no other way to say it. The fact that so many people say it doesn’t make it true, just indoctrinated. The Reagan-Bush era led to unprecedented debt that the Clinton era recovered, and then the GW Bush era brought right back. They can continue to try and rewrite history, but it’s a big fat lie.

The notion that cutting taxes somehow — magically — increases government revenues is a myth that won’t die. “The claim that tax cuts pay for themselves…is contradicted by the historical record,” reported the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which showed that revenues grew twice as fast in the 1990s, when taxes were raised, than in the 1980s, when taxes were cut. FactCheck.org called a claim like Hutchison’s “highly misleading” and stated the obvious fact that “we can’t have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers.”

“[E]verything you’ve heard about how revenues have boomed since the Bush tax cuts is wrong,” economist Paul Krugman wrote, noting that government revenues climbed steadily through the Clinton administration, then plunged dramatically following the 2001 Bush tax cuts. And falling revenues during tax-cutting Republican administrations means growing debt

Think Progress » Kay Bailey Hutchison’s Bizarro World: “Every Major Tax Cut In History Has Created More Revenue”.