Originally Posted by tony286

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine...11_page_2.html
As always, the Republican leaders justified their intransigence by invoking the demons of job-killing taxes that would suppress the dynamism of overtaxed Americans, hampering growth. This is partisan nonsense. In terms of the economy as a whole, federal taxes are at their lowest level since 1950. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that federal taxes would account for 14.8 percent of gross domestic product in 2011.

That isn?t a one-year anomaly: Revenue was 14.9 percent of GDP in both 2009 and 2010. Compare that with a postwar average of about 18.5 percent of GDP, and an average of 18.2 percent during the Administration of President Ronald Reagan. Which brings us to another dubious claim: Raising taxes in a downturn hinders growth. In 1982, amid a punishing 16-month recession, Reagan approved the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. A booming economy followed in 1983 and 1984, enabling him to sail to re-election.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton forced a tax increase through Congress that Representative Dick Armey, then chairman of the House Republican Conference, condemned as a ?job killer? that would push the economy into recession. That increase was succeeded by the creation of 23 million new jobs, and the Clinton Administration left a budget surplus of about $236 billion. By contrast, President George W. Bush pushed through two rounds of tax cuts and created just 3 million jobs. He also turned the surplus he inherited into a $1.2 trillion deficit.