The title of this diary is a common refrain from Conservative government leadership.
Sorry about all the numbers and math, but trust me, at the end, you'll get it.
This past year, Fiscal Year 2010, Government revenue as a percentage of GDP was around 28%.
In 2000, when we were last on track with a Federal Budget Surplus, it was 36%.
Total Federal expenditures in 2010 ended up being about $3,456,200,000,000 (Three Trillion, Four Hundred and Fifty-Six Billion, Two Hundred Million Dollars), with a deficit around $1,293,500,000,000 (One Trillion, Two Hundred Ninety-Three Billion, Five Hundred Million Dollars).
Add them together for total Federal costs, deficit and all, and we get $4,749,700,000,000 (Four Trillion, Seven Hundred Forty-Nine Billion, Seven Hundred Million Dollars).
The best figures I could find for the actual GDP for 2010 (every source I could find concentrated on the GDP growth percentage) was a little above 14 Trillion Dollars.
Now, if you do the math, taking the Federal Expenditures for 2010 ($3,456,200,000,000) dividing them by 28 (the percentage of the GDP that represents) and then multiply that by 36, you get how much income we would have gotten if Government revenue rates were at FY2000 levels, as if we had never lowered the taxes on the rich and corporations, or opened up all those loopholes in the tax code. And you know what?
If we were taxing like we did in 2000 (36% of GDP), we would have more than $4,443,600,000,000 (Four Trillion, Four Hundred and Forty-Three Billion, Six Hundred Million Dollars) coming in, now, that wouldn't yield a surplus, it would actually be a deficit of around $306,100,000,000 (Three Hundred and Six Billion, One Hundred Million Dollars).
Now that the math is all over (whew!) what we are left with is this: If we had put Clintons policies into place last year, we would have lessened the deficit by over 1.1 Trillion Dollars, without cutting a cent from spending.
Now, don't get me wrong, we could stand a few spending cuts. But, Isn't it brutally obvious that we have a far bigger revenue problem?