It’s the same answer to every problem: Cut taxes, it’s magic! In exactly the same way leprechauns and unicorns are magic. Tax cuts are the pixie dust of the GOP, just sprinkle them and believe really, really hard and you can fly! It reflects an economic outlook on about the same grade level as Peter Pan.
Why does this make me sad? Because it’s hard to see the country prospering when one of its two major political parties is this economically illiterate. McConnell isn’t some backbencher. He’s Senate minority leader. And he thinks there’s “no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue.”
There’s an ontological question here about what, exactly, McConnell considers to be “evidence.” But how about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimations? “The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half — 48 percent — of this $539 billion in increased costs.” How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush’s CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term “charlatans and cranks” for people who believed that “broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue.” He continued: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.”
It’s like arguing with 3 year old, there just isn’t any point Ezra.
