Raising Tax Rates Does Nothing- Spending Is The Problem

he Bush 43 deficits were not produced because of tax cuts, they were produced because he spent heavily on the war on terror and on the internal security state. Democrats were afraid to be called 'soft on terror', so they did not block this spending.

The US collected a declining share of GDP in tax revenue from 2001-2002 because of the dot com crash and the post-9/11 recession, but from 2003-2007, federal tax revenues climbed every year, from both corporations and from individuals. With the collapse of the mortgage bubble, tax revenues began declining again in 2008. The CBO projections are that tax revenues collected in 2010 will be a lower percentage of GDP than any year of Bush 43's presidency.

This recent chart that appeared in the New York Times shows this all very clearly:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/10/20/business/economy/revenues.jpg

The US does not pay its bills with tax collection, it pays them with expansion of the monetary supply. If you compare the decades of the 50's, '60's, '70', '80's, '90's, and '00's, you will see that average federal tax revenues for every decade fall in the range of 17-19% of GDP, regardless of what the top tax rate was at the time. Raising the top tax rate to 100% would do absolutely nothing to balance the budget because you must cut spending- that is where your deficits come from. Borrowing+­interest+t­rade deficit= budget deficits.