PolitiFact: GOP Claim That Tax Cuts Raise Revenues Rated ‘False’

[Purveyor]

WASHINGTON – The Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checker PolitiFact took on the Republican claim that reducing tax rates has always produced higher federal revenues, rating it "false."

"Every time we've cut taxes, revenues have gone up, the economy has grown," Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) said Sunday on ABC's This Week, making the case for keeping taxes low as a way of reducing the federal deficit.

"We should first note that on its face, Walsh’s statement is not accurate," PolitiFact declared on Tuesday. "There was a small dip in 1983, after President Ronald Reagan signed off on a tax cut in 1981, though tax revenues increased the next year and all through the 1980s. More significantly, income tax revenues fell in 2001, 2002 and 2003, as President George W. Bush successfully pursued tax cuts."

The fact-checking website said that Walsh's central justification -- that the federal government eventually took in higher revenues years after the Bush tax cuts -- was an inappropriate causation, given that revenue increases are typically attributed by economists to economic growth.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/20/gop-claim-that-tax-cuts-raise-revenues-rated-false/

[Peacetrain]

1. K&R and Hot Damn

good to see this and not just letting them slide with that lie again

[HughBeaumont]

2. THANK YOU.

Absolutely fucking ridiculous that Stephen Moore and the rest of these pundit schmucks are allowed to get away with this idiotic canard again and again.

But hey, when you control the message, I guess you can say anything and your average ham-n-egger moron will lap it up like a Krispy Kreme cheeseburger.

[harun]

3. Conservatives know it is false, they just like to hear it.

They are not a fact or truth based movement.

[hfojvt]

4. it's kind of amazing that these flat-earther types are not laughed out of the spotlight

But politifact seems to get it wrong too. There was not a "small dip in 1983" not if you take inflation into account and just look at income taxes (something supply siders hate to do) as I wrote before

real income tax revenues

"1977 - 241.05
1978 - 256.22
1979 - 286.07
1980 - 286.93
1981 - 306.63
1982 - 297.92
1983 - 276.77
1984 - 275.94
1985 - 301.2
1986 - 304.12
1987 - 336.86
1988 - 332.64
1989 - 355.03
1990 - 354.49

Note well the decrease between 1981 at 306.63 and 1986 at 304.12. Note that 6% yearly increases were normal from 1977-1981. If revenue had continued to increase at just 5% per year it would have been at 475.68 in 1990 instead of just 354.49."

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/98

A 10% drop isn't really what I would call "small". It may have just looked small because of 8-12% inflation in those days. Or as supply siders always like to lump FICA taxes in there so increases in FICA tax revenue can offset the decreases in income tax revenue.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/hfojvt/29