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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (41941)	3/11/2010 4:35:04 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

So. You are arguing that the CBO's budget analysis is either WRONG, and/or that they are deliberately lying in their analysis? Its wrong because their rules don't allow them to properly deal with reality. Within the rules, I suspect that they do a pretty good job, but if I'm told I have to consider 1+1 to equal 3, than it will be pretty hard for me to do well in math. I didn't just assert they where wrong, I showed why they where wrong. If you don't trust my use of the data, get it yourself. The level of spending (and how much of it was for interest) is easily available at multiple government sources, at Wikipedia, and at all sorts of other places around the web, or in printed sources etc. Estimates on how much the tax cuts reduced revenue are somewhat less available, and don't always agree, but can you find a single one that shows the effect of the tax cuts as something that remotely approaches the non-interest spending increases? I doubt it. I've looked, I've debated people who want to support that position. I've read the articles and blog posts trumpeting the CBO analysis and seen the figures used by the CBO for the supposed affect of the tax cut. Take the largest of those figures add the cost of the increased interest, and you are still well below the cost of the increase in non-interest spending. The CBO only finds differently because they consider spending increases already authorized under current law to not be increases. Also those large estimates for the effect of tax cuts are inaccurate because they do not take in to account the Laffer curve effects. The actual reduction in revenue is less than a static analysis of the tax cut would suggest. Furthermore interest spending is still spending, and should be lumped in with other spending, not with tax cuts. Putting it with tax cuts distorts the issue.