MORE ON FEDERAL TAXES

Before I come to the facts, let's look at who the source is: Bruce Bartlett:

Bruce Bartlett has spent many years in government, including service on the staffs of Representatives Ron Paul and Jack Kemp and Senator Roger Jepsen. He has been executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, senior policy analyst in the Reagan White House, and deputy assistant secretary for economic policy at the Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush administration.

I suspect Baggers will likely claim Bartlett is a RINO simply because they don't like the facts that he presents:

Are Taxes in the U.S. High or Low?
By BRUCE BARTLETT
May 31, 2011, 6:00 am

The broadest measure of the tax rate is total federal revenues divided by the gross domestic product.


By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would consume just 14.8 percent of G.D.P. this year. The last year in which revenues were lower was 1950, according to the Office of Management and Budget.

The postwar annual average is about 18.5 percent of G.D.P. Revenues averaged 18.2 percent of G.D.P. during Ronald Reagan’s administration; the lowest percentage during that administration was 17.3 percent of G.D.P. in 1984.

Bartlett then focuses on Federal business taxes and shows that we have about the lowest rates in the OECD:

 One would not know from the Republican document that corporate taxes are expected to raise just 1.3 percent of G.D.P. in revenue this year, about a third of what it was in the 1950s.