Here's the Tax Rate History. Overtime, it morphs from a fair tax to a tax holiday for high earners.
And here's the Deficit History. When tax rates on high earners shrink, the deficit balloons, except during the World Wars. It's not rocket science/
I highly recommend this article that analyzes the Cat Food Commission.
Why the Fiscal Commission Does Not Serve the American People
Wednesday, 06/30/2010 - 1:13 pm by James K. Galbraith
One more time, tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending created our deficits. To fix the deficits, reverse the tax cuts (not for the middle class, if there still is one) and reduce military spending.
Keep your hands off of our social safety nets and support the long-term unemployed.
The first chart above is from a 2004 report by the Center for Budget and Priorities
Tax Returns: A Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration's Record on Cutting Taxes...
Executive Summary
The Bush Administration has stood in favor of tax cuts through thick and thin. In the midst of a booming economy and large projected budget surpluses, President Bush’s top economic policy initiative — both as a candidate in 2000 and upon taking office — was to cut taxes. When the economy slowed, the Bush Administration’s response also was dominated by tax cuts. Now, in the face of yawning deficits and its own pledge to reduce them, the Administration has again put forward large, permanent tax cuts as part of its most recent budget.
http://www.cbpp.org/...
Emphasis, mine.
IMO, this chart demonstrates that tax cuts increase the deficit because we know who implemented the tax cuts: Reagan and Bush II
http://zfacts.com/...
ibid.
And that Trickle Down Theory, Bogus! During the Bush administration, the country had the weakest economic expansion since WWII
For six of the seven indicators, the average annual growth rate between 2001 and 2007 was below the average growth rate for the comparable periods of other post-World War II economic expansions.
Notably, this expansion was among the weakest since World War II with respect to both overall economic growth and growth in fixed non-residential investment. These two indicators should have captured any positive “growth effects” of the tax cuts.
The labor market also was weaker during the 2001-2007 expansion. Both employment growth and wage and salary growth were weaker during this expansion as a whole than in any prior expansion since the end of World War II.
The 2001-2007 expansion outperformed the average post-World War II expansion in only one area: corporate profits, which grew much more rapidly than average.
http://www.cbpp.org/...
Here's how Trickle Down has created the worst concentration of wealth at the top since the lead up to The Great Depression. And we wonder why people are suffering...AGAIN.
Conclusion: Republicans bad for economy, good for corporate profits.
The true cause of our deficits is reported by The Center on budget and Policy Priorities. The GOP lies are exposed.
The events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.
While President Obama inherited a dismal fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s long-term deficit problem. But we should not mistake the causes of our predicament.
Here's a chart from the same source article, dated 1/17/2010 as the above quote:
http://www.cbpp.org/...
One more time:
THE BUSH TAX CUTS AND THE WARS CREATED THE DEFICITS, THE RECESSION MADE THEM A BIT WORSE.
Listen to the words of the grand daughter whose grandfather installed the Times Square debt clock:
And many of these very same screeching deficit hawks run and sit on the boards of many of the companies that fired.....laid off millions of Americans and are now receiving larger dividends on their investments in the very same companies that FIRED US.
How sick is this!
We need to rub the FACTS in their faces over and over and over again.
Even the teabag people should be outraged by the facts, but not if they don't know them.
Do not allow anyone, President Obama, Barney Frank, and any Repulbicans get away with blaming so-called entitlements, formerly referred to as our Social Safety Net for the deficit.
Social Security, the title has meaning. Without Social Security, we will return to the dark days of Social Insecurity, days where elders starved and froze to death. Is this really what they want?
How many young families today would be homeless and/or hungry if the Grand Parents were not sheltering and feeding them.
Picking one of the most vulnerable sectors of our society to short change, to renig on our contracts with them, is hateful, heartless, and enormously irresponsible.
I sometimes wonder if those who are targeting Social Security are driven by greed that wants to steal every penny and every asset the Baby Boomers worked and saved for?
Or maybe they are driven by a desire to simply walk away from the debt they created by robbing Social Security to pay for wars, etc. Social Security, our insurance payments, have been used like their piggy bank. They need to pay SS back. Period.
Stating that Social Security programs are a Deficit Problem is a bogus claim.