"it's all just a little bit of history repeating..."

In the late 80s, I used to lunch regularly with a co-worker and good friend who was a liberal, but a nice, good, well-meaning liberal. Ned was seriously concerned about the well-being of people less fortunate, and he was an opponent of the Reagan tax cuts, feeling that they'd had created the huge budget deficits, increased the national debt, and made it more difficult for the government to help people. The internet wasn't available the way it is now, but I was still able to dig out the information and point out to him that government revenues had actually increased significantly following the tax cuts, but that government spending had increased even faster, and that was driving the deficit.

Well, according to a piece today by Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal, history is repeating itself. (Oops - it was yesterday - I just saw it today...)

Earlier this month the Congressional Budget Office released its latest report on tax revenue collections. The numbers are an eye-popping vindication of the Laffer Curve and the Bush tax cut's real economic value. Federal tax revenues surged in the first eight months of this fiscal year by $187 billion. This represents a 15.4% rise in federal tax receipts over 2004. Individual and corporate income tax receipts have exploded like a cap let off a geyser, up 30% in the two years since the tax cut. Once again, tax rate cuts have created a virtuous chain reaction of higher economic growth, more jobs, higher corporate profits, and finally more tax receipts.

Alas, all of the fiscal news is not celebratory. The CBO also reports that federal expenditures are up $110 billion, or 7.2%, so far this year as the congressional Republican spending spree rolls on.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."