"Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released the first estimateToday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released the first estimate"
Can't find that on the CBO site. Must be from one of your wacko ones.
Here is what the CBO says.
Reality: Strong revenue growth in 2005 and 2006 has not made up for extraordinarily weak revenue growth over the previous few years.
When discussing revenue growth since the enactment of the tax cuts, Administration officials typically focus only on revenue growth since 2004. This provides a “convenient” starting point for their arguments, as it sets a very low bar. Measured as a share of the economy, revenues in 2004 were at their lowest level since 1959. Given this historically low starting point, it is not surprising that revenues have recovered since then. Supporters of the tax cuts selectively cite revenue growth over just the past two years to argue that the tax cuts are fueling increases in revenues.
Even taking into account the growth in revenues in fiscal year 2006, total revenue growth over the current business cycle as a whole has still been negative, after adjusting for inflation and population growth. (The current business cycle began in March 2001, when the last business cycle hit its peak and thereby came to an end.) In other words, the current revenue “surge” is merely restoring revenues to where they were half a decade ago. In contrast, five and a half years after the peak of previous post-World War II business cycles, real per-capita revenues had increased by an average of 10 percent, and in the 1990s, real per-capita revenues were up 11 percent. Revenues in 2006 are still more than $200 billion short of where they would have been had they grown at the rates typical in other recoveries. (http://www.cbpp.org/7-10-06bud.htm)
Further, while the Administration has credited the tax cuts with the drop in the projected fiscal year 2006 deficit to “only” $248 billion, this year’s budget would be essentially balanced were it not for the tax cuts. Based on Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, the total cost of tax cuts enacted since January 2001 is about $250 billion in 2006, taking into account the increased interest costs on the debt that have resulted from the deficit financing of the tax cuts. This means that even with the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal budget would essentially be in balance now if the tax cuts had not been enacted, or if their costs had been offset. While supporters of these tax cuts claim that their positive economic effects have lowered their cost, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service found in a September, 2006 report that “at the current time, as the stimulus effects have faded and the effects of added debt service has grown, the 2001-2004 tax cuts are probably costing more than expected.” (http://www.cbpp.org/8-17-06bud.htm)
Looking out over the next several decades, when deficits are projected to be far larger (because of the impact on the budget of the retirement of the baby boomers and the continued rise in health care costs), the tax cuts, if extended, will still be a major contributor to the nation’s fiscal problems. To put the long-run cost of the tax cuts in perspective, the 75-year Social Security shortfall, about which the President and Congressional leaders have expressed grave concern, is about one-third the cost of the tax cuts over the same period. (http://www.cbpp.org/5-1-06socsec.htm)
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