Some Explanation for the Deficits – Quit Cutting Taxes

It is not spending causing the issues as the young Trump boasts. It is the tax cuts which have imbalanced credits to debits causing the deficits. What Republican’s promised would happen, failed to happen. The 2017 tax cuts did not stimulate the economy enough (not at all) to balance out spending to receipts. Since the tax cuts failed to improve tax receipts as claimed, taxes should be allowed to return. Since the TCJA did not pay for itself, the TCJA was passed using Reconciliation; everything which means everything that was a tax cut reverts back to pre-TCJA what it was.

Trump, his silly sons, and Republicans do not want to play now that time is up in 2025.

Furthermore, the Bush Tax Breaks have added to the deficits.

On Angry Bear, this should not be so damn difficult to understand.

Tax Cuts Are PRIMARILY RESPONSIBLE for the Increasing Debt Ratio

Center for American Progress

Some Brief History

The issue of deficit spending goes back a number of years. After WWII, the federal debt declined from 106% of GDP to 25% of GDP. A very brief recital of what has taken place through several Presidental schemes. A better recital can be found here: Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio, Center for American Progress

Fiscal policy in the postwar era

In the 34 years after 1946, the federal debt declined from 106 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to just 25 percent, despite the federal government’s running deficits in 26 of those years. The debt ratio declined for two reasons. First, the government ran a “primary,” or noninterest, surplus in a large majority of those years. This means that, not counting interest payments, the budget was in surplus. Second, the economic growth rate exceeded the Treasury interest rate in a large majority of those years. These two factors—along with the starting debt ratio—are the levers that control debt ratio sustainability.⁷ With a primary balance, the growth rate need only match the Treasury interest rate for the debt ratio to be stable. The presence of both primary surpluses and growth rates that exceeded the Treasury interest rate created significant downward pressure on the debt ratio.⁸

The nation’s fiscal pictured changed in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan enacted the largest tax cut in U.S. history,⁹ reducing revenues by the equivalent of $19 trillion over a decade in today’s terms. Although Congress raised taxes¹⁰ in many of the subsequent years of the Reagan administration to claw back close to half the revenue loss,¹¹ the equivalent of $10 trillion of the president’s 1981 tax cut remained.

The Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) last long-term budget outlook before those tax cuts were largely permanently extended¹⁵ projected that revenues would be higher than noninterest spending for each of the 65 years that its extended baseline covered.¹⁶ In other words, right up until before the Bush tax cuts were made permanent, the CBO was projecting that, even with an aging population and ever-growing health care costs, revenues were nonetheless expected to keep up with program costs. However, in the next year, that was no longer the case.¹⁷ As a result of the massive tax cut, the CBO projected that revenues would no longer keep up due to being cut so drastically and, as a result, the debt ratio would rise indefinitely.

The Bush Tax Cuts

The George W. Bush administration, empowered by a trifecta in 2001, enacted sweeping tax cuts that will have cost more than $8 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. The tax cuts lowered personal income tax rates across the board, both for labor income and for capital gains, and they significantly increased the untaxed portion of estates and lowered the estate tax rate. These changes were enormously tilted toward the rich and wealthy.²³  While these increases were paired with an expansion of the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit, the total package gave significantly greater savings to the wealthy and also made the U.S. tax code significantly more regressive.²⁴ In 2013, a significant majority of the Bush tax cuts were made permanent with bipartisan support, locking in lower tax rates and deep cuts to the estate tax.²⁵ These changes led to a significantly more regressive tax code than existed before the Bush tax cuts were enacted, and one that brought in vastly less revenue.

President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill,²⁶ enacted when Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2017, will have cost roughly $1.7 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. These tax cuts reduced personal income tax rates and permanently lowered the corporate tax rate, among other changes. Despite being paired with a further expansion of the child tax credit, the 2017 changes also largely benefited the wealthy, once again making the U.S. tax code significantly more regressive.²⁷

Taken together, the Bush tax cuts, their bipartisan extensions, and the Trump tax cuts, have cost $10 trillion since their creation and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since then. They are responsible for more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if you exclude the one-time costs for responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession. While these one-time costs increased the level of debt, they did nothing to affect the trajectory of the debt ratio. With or without them, the United States would currently have stable debt, albeit potentially at a higher level, despite rising spending.²⁸ In other words, these legislative changes—the Bush and Trump tax cuts—are responsible for more than 90 percent of the change in the trajectory of the debt ratio to date (see Figure 3) and will grow to be responsible for more than 100 percent of the debt ratio increase in the future. They are thus entirely responsible for the fiscal gap—the magnitude of the reduction in the primary deficit needed to stabilize the debt ratio over the long run.²⁹ The current fiscal gap is roughly 2.4 percent of GDP. Thus, maintaining a stable debt-to-GDP ratio over the long run would require the primary deficit as a percentage of GDP to average 2.4 percent less over the period. Because the costs of the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and the Trump tax cuts—on average, roughly 3.8 percent of GDP over the period³⁰—exceeds the fiscal gap, without them, all else being equal, debt as a percentage of the economy would decline indefinitely.³¹

The Trump Tax Cuts

President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill,²⁶ enacted when Republicans gained control of the White House and both houses of Congress in 2017, will have cost roughly $1.7 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2023. These tax cuts reduced personal income tax rates and permanently lowered the corporate tax rate, among other changes. Despite being paired with a further expansion of the child tax credit, the 2017 changes also largely benefited the wealthy, once again making the U.S. tax code significantly more regressive.²⁷

Taken together, the Bush tax cuts, their bipartisan extensions, and the Trump tax cuts, have cost $10 trillion since their creation and are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since then. They are responsible for more than 90 percent of the increase in the debt ratio if you exclude the one-time costs for responding to COVID-19 and the Great Recession. While these one-time costs increased the level of debt, they did nothing to affect the trajectory of the debt ratio. With or without them, the United States would currently have stable debt, albeit potentially at a higher level, despite rising spending.²⁸ 

In other words, these legislative changes—the Bush and Trump tax cuts—are responsible for more than 90 percent of the change in the trajectory of the debt ratio to date (see Figure 3) and will grow to be responsible for more than 100 percent of the debt ratio increase in the future. They are thus entirely responsible for the fiscal gap—the magnitude of the reduction in the primary deficit needed to stabilize the debt ratio over the long run.²⁹ The current fiscal gap is roughly 2.4 percent of GDP. Thus, maintaining a stable debt-to-GDP ratio over the long run would require the primary deficit as a percentage of GDP to average 2.4 percent less over the period. Because the costs of the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and the Trump tax cuts—on average, roughly 3.8 percent of GDP over the period³⁰—exceeds the fiscal gap, without them, all else being equal, debt as a percentage of the economy would decline indefinitely.³¹