ThinkProgress loves a challenge, so we looked into Pence's claim. As he suggested, it wasn't hard to find out on the internet that this common conservative claim is wrong.
As Media Matters noted when Sean Hannity made the same argument, revenues did not get close to doubling under Reagan:
According to the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB), when adjusted for inflation to constant fiscal year 2000 dollars, receipts (revenues) increased only from $1.077 trillion to $1.236 trillion during Reagan's term in office. Even in unadjusted (current) dollars, Hannity's claim that revenues "doubled" to more than $1 trillion during the Reagan administration is false: From 1981 to 1988, revenues in current dollars increased from $599.3 billion to $909.3 billion.
Additionally, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has found that "Income tax receipts grew noticeably more slowly than usual in the 1980s, after the large cuts in individual and corporate income tax rates in 1981." In contrast, "income tax collections grew much more rapidly in the 1990s," when "marginal income tax rates at the top of the income spectrum were raised," wrote CBPP.
rest at http://thinkprogress.org/2009/01/06/pence-reagan-challenge/
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