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Saying it is so doesnt make it so
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: January 11th, 2015
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/reich/article/Saying-it-is-so-...
According to reports, one of the first acts of the Republican-controlled Congress will be to fire Doug Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, because he wont use dynamic scoring for his economic projections. Dynamic scoring is the magical math Republicans have been pushing since they came up with supply-side trickle-down economics. Its based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldnt look as if they increased the budget deficit. Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as the asserted revenue effects of supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed. Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt. George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton, but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The Bush tax cuts reduced revenue by $3 trillion. Yet Republicans dont want to admit supply-side economics is hokum. As a result, theyve never had much love for the truth-tellers at the Congressional Budget Office. The pattern seems to be: If you don't like the facts, make them up. Or have your benefactors finance think tanks filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say.
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