The Treasury Department reported Friday that federal revenues reached $2.12 trillion ($2,120,000,000,0000) for the first ten months of fiscal year 2007. In both current and inflation-adjusted dollars, that puts the federal government on course for the most revenue it’s ever collected in a year. Indeed, it’s the most revenue any government in the history of the world has ever collected. And yet it’s not enough to satisfy the voracious appetites of the spenders in Congress and the administration. Spending was $2.27 trillion for the same ten months.
It seems that the deficit problem in Washington is not a result of insufficient tax revenue but rather the inexorable growth of spending on everything from earmarks to entitlements to war.
To be sure, the U.S. economy is the largest national economy in history, and that’s the main reason for record tax levels. And tax revenues are not at their peak in terms of percentage of GDP–though they’re getting close. Earlier in the year OMB estimated that revenues as a percentage of GDP would reach 18.5 percent in 2007. But as of a month ago that figure had reached 18.8 percent, approaching the levels that typically produce popular demand for relief. But as spending interests become stronger and more widespread in Washington, popular demand for lower taxes faces more resistance. It seems safe to conclude that George W. Bush will go down in history as the biggest taxer and the biggest spender ever.
Duck if you don’t want to be hit by the flying pigs today. Has the resignation of Karl Rove suddenly returned political coverage to reality? First we had AP debunk the right wing smears on Barack Obama. Now The Swamp reports on how John McCain attacked John Kerry by misquoting Kerry’s position on the war. Maybe the media has really learned that reporting the news does not meaning repeating every untrue statement from the right without fact checking. After quoting an interview with John McCain they write:
McCain was talking of course about Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.,) the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. If you give McCain the benefit of the doubt, he misremembered Kerry’s position. If you’re more cynical, he intentionally misstated Kerry’s position to make his own support of Bush more palatable.
Either way, it was odd coming in an interview where McCain sought to align himself on the side of character.
From there they quote John Kerry’s actual position on Iraq, which was quite different from the straw man which McCain attacked.
Politics will never be the same if Republicans are forced to respond to the actual views of Democrats as opposed to simply inventing straw men to attack.
Returning to the smears on Obama, there are segments of the news media which actually appears to enjoy being journalists as opposed to repeating right wing smears. The Politico reports the story and concludes, “Points victory to Obama.” First read also reported on AP’s fact checking in their afternoon email update.