There’d be a lot more if I wasn’t deliberately confining myself to mainstream media reports.

That’s probably worth four anywhere else.

I wondered how long it would take for them to notice the “baseline” bit, not to mention the usual fast-and-loose with 2009.

Say, does this mean Bush gets the credit for the improvement in job losses before October of 2009?

Get your washable magic marker and color everything up to September, 2009, red.

People are welcome to look at the inflation-adjusted numbers and do their own math.

I have the Excel spreadsheet too, if anybody wants me to load it here.

Almost all the data I’ve seen over the last 4 years have indicated the great recession reduced the government’s tax revenues by about $500B per year. I even explained how we got there in an earlier post.

2010-2012 would then mean $1.5T less in revenue – A little under half of the new debt in that time frame. If the economy was strong the deficits would be around $500B. If we eliminated the Bush tax cuts and end the Afghan war we come close to balancing the budget.

How do I know this? WE DID IT BEFORE IN THE 90S.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out we need to go back to the policies of the 90s which produced so much prosperity.

If you assume we got the same revenues we did in 2008 in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012, there would be a total of about $1.2 trillion more in revenues over that time period. An average of $300 billion a year (2012 numbers are estimates).

Unfortunately, deficits over that same period total about $4.7 trillion. A factor of four.

You still going to tell us the problem is “not enough revenue?” There’s “stuck on stupid” and then there’s “molecularly welded to stupid.”

“The Bush tax cuts are the problem.” That’s the mantra. And yet somehow we generated record revenues under those rates, exceeding any during the Clinton years.

Get rid of all the Bush tax cuts across the board (middle class, too) and you bring in about another $370 billion a year. The CBO, under Obama’s spending plans, which specifically include keeping the $300 billion in middle-class tax cuts, has predicted no deficits over the next ten years smaller than $488 billion, and most are larger.

Don’t you get it? Repealing the Bush tax cuts will not save us. That’s the math.

Getting people out of political office who think private wealth is a crime against humanity just might save us.

If I was making the decision on tax cuts I would kill all of them. Why? Because I don’t equate the tax rates of the 90s to socialism. We had a pretty thriving free market back in those days. And because I care about my country and I am more serious about fixing the problem than sticking to ideology: And yes that means I agree there needs to be entitlement reform.

It’s clear Obama will seek to keep the middle class tax cuts permanent, while restoring the Clinton era rates to Americans who can easily afford it.

But if the GOP plays hardball again and refuses to compromise maybe I’ll get my wish.

I’ve been taking it easy on you. I haven’t even really touched that idiotic analysis of 2009, which apparently doesn’t count anything Obama did before October. Like the real Stimulus Bill, among others.

Yet another reminder: those 2007 revenue levels were with the Bush tax cuts in place. Just saying.

Which Bush tax cuts are you going to kill, Buck? The approximately $70 billion a year for incomes above $250,000, or the $300 billion a year for the middle class? Both? Neither?

Obama chickened out in 2010, when he had complete control of the legislature. What’s he going to do this time?

Eliminate that (and factor in that in the Bush era both Iraq and Afghanistan where “off budget” i.e., not counted in the official budget numbers, and when Obama took office he added them back into the budget right away) and we are back to Bush era deficit levels.

Get rid of the Bush era tax cuts and we will balance the budget in 5-10 years.

Huh?