Dems seize on re-issued CRS tax report
![Chris Van Hollen is shown. | AP Photo Chris Van Hollen is shown. | AP Photo](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20121217030638im_/http://images.politico.com/global/2012/09/120905_chris_van_hollen_dnc_ap_328.jpg)
The Congressional Research Service on Thursday handed Democrats their newest fiscal cliff talking points — again.
The nonpartisan research arm of Congress re-issued a report it recalled weeks ago questioning the theory, prevalent among many Republicans, that lowering taxes spurs economic growth. CRS shelved the original report following complaints from congressional Republicans.
Continue ReadingThe updated report maintains the original report’s conclusions, and comes amid the fierce standoff between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner in fiscal cliff negotiations.
At the crux of the debate is the question of whether to increase tax rates for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Republicans have long held that increasing tax rates, even just on the rich, will crush the economy.
Democrats are already using the new report as ammunition for their proposal to hike taxes on the wealthy.
Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said the study “re-emphasizes the need for Republicans to end their entrenchment and to stop blocking a vote on the Senate bill that would extend the middle-class tax cuts.”
Levin was referring to Senate-passed legislation that would allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire on families making more than $250,000. House Democrats filed a discharge petition to bring the bill to the floor, but so far it hasn’t garnered the signatures needed to force a vote.
Levin hopes the report encourages Boehner to bring the Senate bill to the floor, something that Texas Republican Kevin Brady told POLITICO on Thursday morning would be “unlikely."
The CRS report “put a stake in the heart of the Republican argument that small increases in the marginal tax rate for wealthy individuals somehow hurt economic growth,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
The Maryland lawmaker accused the GOP of trying to hide the report.
“Republicans tried to suppress this evidence,” he said. “They tried to prevent this report from seeing the light of day because they don’t like any evidence that exposes the fiction of their economic theory.”
Readers' Comments (22)
We know thw Trickle Down Fiary doesn't exist - it is a myth promoted the super-rich and their paid stooges like Norquist. The TeaTwits slurp up the fable to their own detriment.
Everyone already knows that facts, truth and data are liberal Democratic Party inventions and cannot be trusted. Better to believe Republican fabrications than Democratic facts.
There are some real dimwits in the House, by trying to squash the report they have simply brought more attention to it in it's final release.
Unfortunately, I don't see the GOP ceasing be a cult whose members stubbornly refuse to accept those parts of reality that don't conform to their favorite fairy tales.
Heres an article about a private sector researcher who concludes that tax cuts for job creators WORK! - the REAL job creators are the 98% - NOT The top 2%
http://economix.blogs.n...
The graph below, based on our research, shows the relationship between the cumulative change in income and payroll tax liabilities for the top 5 percent over a two-year period as a share of gross domestic product and employment growth in the two years after the change.
For each year given, the change in tax liability includes the changes from the current year and from the previous two years.
The graph and the regression analysis on which it is based reveal that there is no link between income tax cuts for the top 5 percent and subsequent job creation. (We also examined the relationship between tax cuts for the top 10 percent and subsequent job creation and found the same result.)
Unfortunately, I don't see the GOP ceasing be a cult whose members stubbornly refuse to accept those parts of reality that don't conform to their favorite fairy tales.
Heres an article about a private sector researcher who concludes that tax cuts for job creators WORK! - the REAL job creators are the 98% - NOT The top 2%
http://economix.blogs.n...
The graph below, based on our research, shows the relationship between the cumulative change in income and payroll tax liabilities for the top 5 percent over a two-year period as a share of gross domestic product and employment growth in the two years after the change.
For each year given, the change in tax liability includes the changes from the current year and from the previous two years.
The graph and the regression analysis on which it is based reveal that there is no link between income tax cuts for the top 5 percent and subsequent job creation. (We also examined the relationship between tax cuts for the top 10 percent and subsequent job creation and found the same result.)
Unfortunately, I don't see the GOP ceasing be a cult whose members stubbornly refuse to accept those parts of reality that don't conform to their favorite fairy tales.
Heres an article about a private sector researcher who concludes that tax cuts for job creators WORK! - the REAL job creators are the 98% - NOT The top 2%
http://economix.blogs.n...
The graph below, based on our research, shows the relationship between the cumulative change in income and payroll tax liabilities for the top 5 percent over a two-year period as a share of gross domestic product and employment growth in the two years after the change.
For each year given, the change in tax liability includes the changes from the current year and from the previous two years.
The graph and the regression analysis on which it is based reveal that there is no link between income tax cuts for the top 5 percent and subsequent job creation. (We also examined the relationship between tax cuts for the top 10 percent and subsequent job creation and found the same result.)
Unfortunately, I don't see the GOP ceasing be a cult whose members stubbornly refuse to accept those parts of reality that don't conform to their favorite fairy tales.
Heres an article about a private sector researcher who concludes that tax cuts for job creators WORK! - the REAL job creators are the 98% - NOT The top 2%
http://economix.blogs.n...
The graph below, based on our research, shows the relationship between the cumulative change in income and payroll tax liabilities for the top 5 percent over a two-year period as a share of gross domestic product and employment growth in the two years after the change.
For each year given, the change in tax liability includes the changes from the current year and from the previous two years.
The graph and the regression analysis on which it is based reveal that there is no link between income tax cuts for the top 5 percent and subsequent job creation. (We also examined the relationship between tax cuts for the top 10 percent and subsequent job creation and found the same result.)
The GOP is immune to facts, math and science. It isn't worth your time to discuss anything requiring intelligence with someone from the far right as they reject it as out of hand without even listening or reading through any data.
So ... .the conservatives/republicans ENTIRE ECONOMIC strategy/theory for the past 30 years has been 100% debunked and proven a FAILURE and a LIE?
We've all known it. I'm glad it's finally presented to conservatives/republicans in a manner that's hard to avoid politically. These debunked FAILED ideas have been ruining our country for WAAAY too long.
The idea that increased after-tax income for the 2% will be primarily invested in American jobs is a complete invention.
Extra money in wealthy pockets is more likely invested in off-shoring American jobs, buying and stripping struggling American firms, automating skilled American manufacturing jobs, or just buying and holding fixed-income securities. More take-home pay for the 98% gets spent, increasing demand for goods and services and raising employment.
Cut taxes on the 98% to create good American jobs.
Republicans: "Don't confuse this issue with facts"
Shut up and raise taxes on everybody. The government needs the money. It's everybody's government. Raise taxes on everybody.
First, beliefs are more important than facts and evidence and no one has ever gone wrong following their beliefs despite facts to the contrary.
Second, listening to intelligent, educated and knowledgeable people whose backgrounds are relevant to the issue under discussion is never a good idea. You are always better off following people who have unfailing principles that they live by unless it doesn't suit thier own personal interests.
Finally, no politician has ever sold out the nation by being more concerned for thier position than the public's good.
“The statistical analysis in this report suggests that tax policy could be related to how the economic pie is sliced — lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.”
This is the truth that Republicans will not admit.
Over the past three decades, economic elites have gamed the system to keep for themselves almost all of the economy's productivity gains.
The result is the greatest income inequality in the world, a new Gilded Age that cannot sustain itself.
Reality apparently has a liberal bias that is why the GOP goes to such inordinate lengths to deny reality. The fact remains this lie about tax cuts creating increased revenues has been disproven over and over again. If that is the case why don't we cut taxes to 1 percent or .1 percent and wait for all that extra revenue. Revenue always goes up because of inflation and population growth claiming that tax cuts cause this increase is like giving tax cuts credit for the sun rising in the morning.
How many times do economists, scientists, and historians have to disprove the claims of Republicans before the media actually reports that nearly half of the country is living in a bizarro alternate reality. How many GOP myths must be debunked before people dismiss them as compulsive liars or deluded lunatics, or possibly both?
Tax cuts do not cause revenue growth. Deregulation is not always good for the consumer, how did financial deregulation work out for everyone in 2007? Where are Saddam's WMDs? Where we treated as liberators? Why didn't three rounds of tax cuts under bush not create any jobs?The world is not young? Global warming is not a myth that only redstaters are smart enough to figure out.
In short the GOP is populated by fools, liars, and those that fall in to both categories.
Nonpartisan proof that raising the tax rate on the ultra-rich will NOT harm the economy ...
“The changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top statutory tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth.”
Nonpartisan proof that lowering tax rates on the ultra-rich leads to greater economic inequality ...
“The statistical analysis in this report suggests that tax policy could be related to how the economic pie is sliced — lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.”
You won't be hearing about this report in the conservative entertainment complex! It runs contrary to the heart of the GOP argument about tax rates.
Why is the supposedly liberal media not reporting on this story more intensly. I mean is it not newsworthy when the entire foundations of Voodoonomics and the entire underpinnings of the Republican party's economic platform is discreditted to the core by a non-partisan and professional analysis? The lie that the media has a liberal bias is one of the greatest tricks the GOP devil has ever played in order to innoccute itself against mounting empirical evidence that Republican ideas are just objectively wrong.
These people are rushing ever more to the right and the GOP is less and less able to control their base. A base that frankly is living in a Soviet style information bubble, fox news and rush limbaugh could decide tomorrow that Ronald Reagan fought grizzly bears witth his bear hands and half the Republicans would believe it to be true. People may think I am being partisan or alarmist, but the conservative movement in this country is now an extremist organization and probably the most dangerous extremist organization in the world because of the real power they wield in the most powerful and indispensable nation in the world. Forget about the 21 century the gop hasn't even come into the 20th century yet. Grover Norqhuist is an unelected absolutist by definition, a man who has stated that: "I want to shrink the federal government to the that I can drown it in a bath tub." Why are Republicans so terrified of this unelected extremist who has voiced opinions that frankly would make Jefferson Davis blush? Why is it that no one in the socalled liberal media is really covering the treasonous and assinine secession movement that has gained hundreds of thousands of signators all localized within a certain region. Remember one thing, a tell tale sign of all extremist regimes is that they create an information bubble for their followers. The Republicans have created their own conservative churchs, schools, colleges, law schools, publications, and tv channels to an extent where their followers live in a reality that looks very much different to what the objective reality really is. We should be very frightened that one of our two parties has been hijacked by extremists.
Reality based economics, always crashes headlong, into Republicans DISASTEROUS VOODOO ECONOMICS and trickle-down snake oil!
"Specifically, it says, “The changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top statutory tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment and productivity growth.”
The Republicans managed to suppress the CRS report, but it's back! Despite the GOP propaganda about the rich being the "job creators" or failing to fund their multiple Bush tax breaks and tax loopholes for the rich because the GOP claimed they would pay for themselves with job creation and economic growth---they lied, as always. The 11-year, $1.6 trillion, Bush tax cuts not only failed to create jobs but added and continue to add to the National Debt along with all those GOP-inflicted bills from the Bush-Cheney regime put on the nation's credit card for their massive military and governement spending with "bridge-to-nowhere" pork projects, the costly Medicare Rx drug entitlement giveaway to drug makers/insurers, and their 20+ years of combined wars who gave billions to their 435+ GOP war profiteers who posted over $60 billion in waste, fraud, and abuse and whose lifetimes of war bills and costly VA healthcare are projected to cost $5 trillion.
The GOP are NOT the job creators with more jobs created under Clinton (23 million) than Reagan, Bush I and II combined and at higher tax rates. Despite all the Bush tax breaks, offshoring of five million jobs, billions in tax-dodging corporate assets while making record corporate profits, fewer jobs were created under Bush-Cheney than any administration since the Great Depression.
The GOP have historically NEVER represented the working class and today's extremist GOP have never been more pro-rich, anti-poor, anti-worker, and unAmerican--willing to put partisan politics ahead of the country. The GOP are morally-bankrupt liars and will drag down their GOPeon supporters with them when they go. No amount of GOP spin or burdening wealth will save them.
Once again, the truth is not important to the Repubs only their agenda.
The truth and history are not subject to the conservative agenda.
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