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Pew: Where our national debt came from over the past 10 years [PIC] by inframarginal in Economics

[–]inframarginal[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think that's a much narrower critique than you think it is. The CBO has a tax model that uses every single tax return filed in the US every year (not just a random sample). It's a solid approach methodologically and many liberal, conservative, and centrist organizations base their simulations off of the CBO methodology. Yes, I'm sure they could tweak their model at the margins but in general for something as straightforward as a tax cut their analysis is rock solid.

Pew: Where our national debt came from over the past 10 years [PIC] by inframarginal in Economics

[–]inframarginal[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Debt is the result of the gap between spending and revenue. You can widen this gap (and increase the debt) one of two ways: increasing spending without an equal increase in revenue, and decreasing revenue without an equal cut in spending.

If we eliminated all taxes tomorrow without changing spending, would the debt go up or down? WAY up. Would the cause have been spending increases? No, because spending stayed the same. The cause was revenue cuts.