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Tax Rates Would Have To Double To Balance Federal Budget

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krazy kaju Posted: Sun, Mar 14 2010 5:08 PM

Here's the Tax Foundation report: http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/25984

Here's Amity Shlaes (author of The Forgotten Man) making a good point about how this report proves that the way to balance the federal budget is to cut spending, not raise taxes:

Notice that this is static scoring, not dynamic scoring. That means that in reality, income tax rates would have increase even more than the Tax Foundation reports, since the wealthy would inevitably move and/or hide their wealth from the IRS.

This is good ammo to use against leftists who claim that we need to raise taxes to balance the budget.

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bloomj31 replied on Sun, Mar 14 2010 6:34 PM

If they were really serious about balancing the budget they'd probably have to cut spending AND raise taxes.

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If they were really serious, they would cut spending enough to make current tax revenue sufficient. Or at least that's what this paper from Harvard states:

As for fiscal adjustments, those based upon spending cuts and no tax increases are more likely to reduce deficits and debt over GDP ratios than those based upon tax increases. In addition, adjustments on the spending side rather than on the tax side are less likely to create recessions

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bloomj31 replied on Sun, Mar 14 2010 7:30 PM

Welp, you and I both know it won't happen.  Dems will never vote to cut spending.  Medicare and SS are untouchable and now we're basically getting a new entitlement.

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Haha, that's how we know they're not serious.

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