Fact Checking McCain’s Conversion to Lafferism

AB read T-bone lets us know that Fact Check actually does its job:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has said that the major tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 have “increased revenues.” He also said that tax cuts in general increase revenues. That’s highly misleading. In fact, the last half-dozen years have shown us that we can’t have both lower taxes and fatter government coffers. The Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and a former Bush administration economist all say that tax cuts lead to revenues that are lower than they otherwise would have been – even if they spur some economic growth. And federal revenues actually declined at the beginning of this decade before rebounding. The growth in the past three years that McCain refers to brings revenues back in line with the 40-year historical average as a percentage of gross domestic product.

The author – Lori Robertson – does a nice job of documenting how certain Republican politicians are spinning. Lori also has a decent list of sources as to what economists have been saying. We could say that John “Straight Talk Express” McCain should be ashamed of such dishonesty, but then this is not the first issue where he is flat out lying to the voters. Nor is he the only Republican Presidential candidate who is telling these Laffer lies.