Nonpartisan Tax Report Removed After Republican Protest

eldavojohn writes "On September 14th a report titled 'Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945' (PDF) penned by the Library of Congress' nonpartisan Congressional Research Service was released to little fanfare. However, the following conclusion of the report has since roiled the GOP enough to have the report removed from the Library of Congress: 'The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution. As measured by IRS data, the share of income accruing to the top 0.1% of U.S. families increased from 4.2% in 1945 to 12.3% by 2007 before falling to 9.2% due to the 2007-2009 recession. At the same time, the average tax rate paid by the top 0.1% fell from over 50% in 1945 to about 25% in 2009. Tax policy could have a relation to how the economic pie is sliced—lower top tax rates may be associated with greater income disparities.' From the New York Times article: 'The pressure applied to the research service comes amid a broader Republican effort to raise questions about research and statistics that were once trusted as nonpartisan and apolitical.' It appears to no longer be found on the Library of Congress' website."

Comments

Re:zero sum game

[kenh]

The purpose of the Tax Code is to fund the operation of the federal government, not to balance out inequities in individual income levels...

You have to deal with the realities of our current tax code:

47% of tax FILERS pay no net INCOME TAX (yes, they pay taxes on their cellphones, auto tires, gasoline, etc)

The top 1% of incomes earn 20% of all income and pay 40% of all COLLECTED income taxes. (Rounded for my convienience)

Now, how do you propose to 'cut' taxes for the lower incomes without also benefiting the higher income people? Raising the thresholds before the tax rates kick in does nothing for the lowest 47% (since they already pay nothing), and disproportionately benefit the higher income earners because they are the ones paying taxes.

If lowering taxes in higher income individuals doesn't stimulate the economy by making more investment capital available (money not spent is typically invested), are you prepared to defend the idea that increasing taxes on higher income individuals will somehow stimulate the economy?

I'd like to see that defense.

Re:Wealth disparity -- more important than income

[Lehk228]

You want to know what would happen if you attacked that wealth? Eventually no one would be motivated to do the things that being to earn them such wealth. Progress would stop dead.

This is what randrrhoids actually believe.

Re:Of course it was!

[cold fjord]

The really funny part... this reminds me exactly of that masturbatory, dystopian, boat anchor of a book, Atlas Shrugged. Government research agencies were operating under extreme pressure from ultra left wing political interests to generate only the results they wanted, or risk losing their jobs. Any results to the contrary were buried.

Note that this one follows one of the worst financial calamities in US history, perpetrated in reality by those magnates at the top (so revered in the story), and total lack of regulation.

My irony gauge just blew a fuse.

Your irony gage is apparently in need of not only repair, but calibration.

Bubba & the housing bubble

Yet the reality of what caused the banking collapse has the fingerprints of tonight’s keynote speaker all over it. Consider two Bubba boo-boos that trace straight to the housing bubble and the 2008 financial crisis.

The first is his obsession with pushing homeownership to new highs via government coercion. The second is his unleashing of Wall Street risk-taking.

Clinton charged his Housing secretaries, Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo, with driving homeownership rates up to about 70 percent of households from around 64 percent in the early ’90s.

How did they do this? Through rigorous enforcement of housing mandates such as theCommunity Reinvestment Act, and by prodding mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make loans to people with lower credit scores (and to buy loans that had been made by banks and, later, “innovators” like Countrywide).

The Housing Department was Fannie and Freddie’s top regulator — and under Cuomo the mortgage giants were forced to start ramping up programs to issue more subprime loans to the riskiest of borrowers.

We know how that turned out: Fannie and Freddie help stoke a housing bubble that actually made homeownership less affordable unless borrowers took out ever-more-risky loans. Eventually, both agencies imploded (along with the housing market); bailing them out since 2008 has already cost taxpayers more than $100 billion.

(And, yes, Bush continued Clinton’s policies — but did try to rein in Fannie and Freddie in his later years, before the meltdown. But Democratic barons in Congress like Rep. Barney Frank balked at stopping the train before the wreck.) . . . more. . .