Paul Ryan's 2013 budget...more laughs.

I just briefly flipped through Representative Paul Ryan's (R - WI), 2013 House budget, and I had to laugh at the irony of one section: taxes relative to government income and GDP.

On page 61, Ryan says that, "Growth is the key to fiscal sustainability – and low rates are the key to growth."  Two things on the first part of that statement:

1. It is not in conflict with Democrats' argument that the largest share of the growth in the federal deficit was due to a large drop in tax income, not because of increased federal spending.
2. If you take a look at Paul Ryan's own figure 8 (page 63), the point is illustrated that, in fact federal spending is decreasing just as tax revenue is increasing!  (By the way, ignore the projections of the OMB - right side of 2011 - because we have no means of evaluating what sort of partisan scenario was provided to the OMB/CBO for their review.)
3. Look closely: in 2011, we were in the same spending - income disparity situation that we were in, during the middle of the Reagan years.  I don't recall Republicans running away from Reagan's legacy, do you?

It is the second part of that statement - "low rates are the key to growth" - that is absolutely hilarious:

1. Looking at figure 6 (page 61), Paul Ryan concludes that tax revenues and the top individual tax rate does not correlate.
1. Well if this is true, then why lower the top tax rate, if it has no effect on tax revenues?
2. If you're not collecting more taxes by either increasing nor decreasing the top tax rate, then the whole trickle-down argument has been disproven!  After all, you can't suggest that tax cuts to the rich will trickle down and increase employment, if the resulting tax revenue does not increase, right?
2. Except if you look very closely at the last 20 years, you will see that the tax increase under Clinton / Gingrich actually did boost tax revenue, while the tax cuts under Bush in 2001 and 2003 had an immediate, negative impact on tax revenue.
1. Remember, figure 6 is a percentage of GDP, so if tax revenue is decreasing, it is underperforming GDP, and if it is increasing, it is outperforming GDP.
2. The rate of real GDP under the first six years of Clinton is no different than the middle 4 years of Bush.
3. Better yet, Paul Ryan's figure 7 clearly shows that in the last 16 years, tax cuts have reduced tax revenue while tax increases have grown tax revenue.

All this goes to show that Republicans really aren't serious, because they don't understand the very charts they use -- so much so that their own charts contradict what they're trying to prove.