Washpo's Sebastian Mallaby in a column entitled
The Return Of Voodoo Economics analyzes recent statements like this by President Bush, that tax cuts actually raise tax revenues:
"You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase."
Mallaby asks and answers the obvious question that should be on everyone's lips:
When top Republicans go around claiming that tax cuts pay for themselves, which economic authorities are they relying on? None, is the answer. These people's approach to government is to make economics up.
But it gets worse.
Not only are there no economists who support Bush's statement (which has been echoed by the President-of-Vice, Dick Cheney, as well as those titans of the Senate, Bill Frist, Charles Grassley, and Rick Santorum) Mallaby references the work of economists -- upon whom the White House relies -- who directly contradict the tax-cuts-pay-for-themselves talking point. For example:
In a study published under Holtz-Eakin's direction last December, the CBO estimated the extent to which a 10 percent reduction in personal taxes might pay for itself. The conclusions confirm that the free-lunch mantra is just plain wrong. On the most optimistic assumptions it could muster, the CBO found that tax cuts would stimulate enough economic growth to replace 22 percent of lost revenue in the first five years and 32 percent in the second five. On pessimistic assumptions, the growth effects of tax cuts did nothing to offset revenue loss.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities agrees with the other economists that the self-funding Bush tax cut is a myth:
In fact, however, the evidence tells a very different story: the tax cuts have not paid for themselves, recent economic growth and revenue growth have not been particularly strong, and revenues remain lower than had been predicted before the tax cuts were enacted.
No economists support them. Their economists contradict them. But they still say it. Why? Because they will do whatever it takes, ethical or not, to get what they want.
They do not deserve to represent us.