Misleading Mantra, Tax and Spend Version

Jared Bernstein Misleading Mantra, Tax and Spend Version. "You know the Republican mantra against revenues in the budget talks: “The problem isn’t that Americans are undertaxed; it’s that their government overspends?”"



"But of course revenues tank with the Bush tax cuts, and fall off of the cliff with the Great Recession, when spending rises sharply, both due to automatic stabilizers like unemployment insurance and policies like the Recovery Act. There’s obviously much more to this analysis then a couple of lines on a graph, but the history of structural (versus cyclical) deficits in recent decades is that they are largely the result of cutting revenues rather than raising spending (and visa-versa–remember Clinton’s budget surpluses)."