From
IBD. Outstanding article explaining how
Tax Cuts have a long history of not only paying for themselves but actually generating more revenue to the Treasury.
President
Obama warned that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's proposed income-tax cuts
will "cost" the government revenue and repeat Bush policies that he says
blew up the deficit.
"The centerpiece of his economic plan are tax cuts," Obama said at
Tuesday's presidential debate in New York. "That's what took us from
surplus to deficit."
He called Romney's tax plan "sketchy," because it promises to raise
revenues while slashing personal tax rates from top to bottom. His
debate sparring partner, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, went further,
calling it a "fraud."
The Obama camp has strenuously opposed Romney's pro-growth strategy,
arguing that tax breaks, especially for the wealthy, "rob" programs for
the middle class and poor because they don't raise revenues and don't
"pay for themselves."
"It has never been done before," Vice President Joe Biden insisted in last week's debate with Romney running-mate Paul Ryan.
"It's been done a couple of times, actually," Ryan shot back.
Kennedy
Kennedy's major tax cut, which included chopping the top marginal
rate to 70% from 91%, became law in early 1964, after his untimely
death. It promised to grow the economy and close the budget gap.
"Coming at a time of substantial deficit in the federal budget, this
was a startling proposal to many observers," said New York University
economist Richard Sylla, co-author of "The Evolution of the American
Economy."
To the shock of many naysaying Democrats, the plan worked. The
economy grew at an average 5.5% clip, and unemployment fell to 3.8%. In
turn, the annual deficit shrank to $1 billion from $7 billion as
individual income-tax receipts nearly doubled. (See the chart.)
Reagan
President Reagan picked up where Kennedy left off, slashing the top
personal rate from 70% all the way down to 28%. The historic tax relief
triggered record new business start-ups and small-business expansion.
As in the '60s, tax revenues exploded throughout the '80s as the
economy boomed. Between 1982, when the first round of Reagan's
across-the-board tax cuts went into effect, and 1990, when President
George H.W. Bush broke his no-new-taxes pledge, individual tax receipts
jumped 57% to $467 billion.
Clinton
Obama says he wants to go back to the higher personal income "tax
rates we had when Bill Clinton was president. ... That's part of what
took us from deficits to surpluses."
In fact, those budget surpluses didn't materialize until after
Clinton in 1997 reluctantly signed a GOP tax bill that cut the
capital-gains rate to 20% from 28%.
The result was dramatic. Tax receipts from capital gains ballooned as stock and other capital investment more than tripled.
Between 1996 and 2000, "the increase in capital gains revenues
accounted for a little over 20% of the total increase in federal
revenues," former Treasury official Bruce Bartlett said.
For the first time, individual tax receipts hit $1 trillion, before peaking in 2000 from the dot-com bust and Clinton recession.
Bush II
While Obama claims the Bush tax cuts caused the recession and record deficits, the evidence says otherwise.
After President George W. Bush in 2003 signed the largest tax cut
since Reagan — including dropping the top marginal rate to 35% from
39.6% — government receipts from individual income taxes rose from $794
billion to a peak of $1.2 trillion in 2007, when the mortgage crisis
began — a jump of 47%.
Stronger economic growth expanded the tax base and brought in so much
revenue that Bush more than halved the deficit over that period.
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