CBO Figures Dispel Myth that Bush Tax Cuts Caused Today's Deficit
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CBO Figures Dispel Myth that Bush Tax Cuts Caused Today's Deficit by Scott A. Hodge Urban legends are things that we have all heard and thought to be true, but end up being false. For instance, we've all heard stories of poisoned Halloween candy, yet there have never been any documented cases of children poisoned by tampered candy. The biggest urban legend in Washington is that the Bush-era tax cuts are the cause of our current $1.4 trillion deficit. Indeed, we've all heard that the tax cuts were responsible for turning $5.6 trillion in projected surpluses into a sea of red ink. But like the story of tampered Halloween candy, this story turns out to be false too. Congress' official scorekeeper, the Congressional Budget Office, recently released a review of the budget estimate they issued in January 2001 and the factors that turned their $5.6 trillion surplus projection into $6.2 trillion in cummulative deficits by 2011. The pie chart below breaks down the major components of the $11.8 trillion swing from surpluses to deficits over the ten year period 2002 to 2011. Higher spending turns out to be the largest factor erasing those surplus projections, comprising 44 percent of the ten-year swing. Over the past ten years, spending was $5.2 trillion higher than what CBO projected it would be in 2001. [These figures include the interest costs associated with the higher spending]. Discretionary spending accounts for 68 percent of this total.
Transcript of CBO Figures Dispel Myth that Bush Tax Cuts Caused Today's Deficit
8/6/2019 CBO Figures Dispel Myth that Bush Tax Cuts Caused Today's Deficit
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8/6/2019 CBO Figures Dispel Myth that Bush Tax Cuts Caused Today's Deficit
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