The Cost of the Bush Tax Cuts, Ctd.

Chuck Marr (via Mark Thoma):

The congressional “supercommittee” that the debt limit deal establishes to recommend more deficit-reduction measures not only can consider revenue increases, but must consider them if it’s going to produce a balanced plan.  Here are five reasons why:

1. President Bush’s tax cuts are a significant contributor to projected deficits, as this well-known chart shows. Letting the tax cuts expire would save up to $3.8 trillion over the next decade, including the savings on interest payments on the national debt.
   
   Moreover, claims that we must extend the tax cuts to avoid seriously harming the economy are incorrect.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that extending the tax cuts would be the least effective of all spending and tax options that CBO examined for boosting the weak economy and creating jobs.  CBO also pointed out that permanently extending the tax cuts without paying for them would, on balance, weaken economic growth in the long run because of the large increases in deficits it would produce.

$3.8 trillion in a decade sounds like more than $380 billion a year, but it definitely is a very large amount.  If the Bush tax cuts went away, we would be stuck with those burdensome tax rates which caused the government to actually decrease the amount of debt held by the public.  I can't believe anybody is taken seriously when they say they are going to balance the budget without raising revenues.  Not going to happen.