Eddie Lazear Is About to Take on a Really Hard Job...

Eddie Lazear is taking his place in the hot seat as Chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisers--a job placed in the executive branch by the post-World War II Employment Act to make sure that economic expertise would always have a voice in White House decision making.

From what Max Sawicky reports of George W. Bush's recent speeches, Eddie will more than earn his pay:

MaxSpeak, You Listen!: THE SECOND GREATEST IDEA SINCE SLICED BREAD : George W. Bush

"One of the interesting things that I hope you realize when it comes to cutting taxes is this tax relief not only has helped our economy, but it's helped the federal budget. In 2004, tax revenues to the Treasury grew about 5.5 percent. That's kind of counter-intuitive, isn't it? At least it is for some in Washington. You cut [personal income] taxes and the tax revenues increase. See, some people are going to say, well, you cut taxes, you're going to have less revenue. No, that's not what happened. What happened was we cut taxes and in 2004, revenues increased 5.5 percent.... And the reason why is cutting taxes caused the economy to grow, and as the economy grows there is more revenue generated in the private sector, which yields more tax revenues."

Quoth Historical Tables, Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2007, Table 2-1, "Receipts by Source," page 30: Individual Income Taxes: Fiscal Year 2003: $793,699 million. Fiscal Year 2004: $808,959 million.

By advanced fuzzy-mathematical techniques, year-over-year [nominal] rate of growth: 1.9 percent [a full percentage point lower than inflation plus labor force growth, and a full four percentage points lower than inflation plus labor force plus productivity growth].

Now to be fair, total receipts for '04 did increase by 5.5 percent, but these consisted in great part of taxes that were not cut, and of the shifting of tax liability in the corporate income tax due to the jive bonus depreciation shenanigans.

So here's my second greatest idea since sliced bread:

Since not cutting taxes other than the income tax caused total revenues to increase, not cutting the individual income tax as well ought to cause even bigger increases. Imagine, don't cut taxes, and revenues will go up.

[Applause] Thank you, thank you.