It Was Clinton’s Spending Cuts — Not His Tax Hikes — That Worked.

Via Ed Morrissey at the Fiscal Times:

 In other words, the prosperity of the Clinton years was in significant part a fiction based on irrational market behavior, boosted in one instance by significant distortion introduced by government policy.  That’s also true for a good part of the Bush-era prosperity, as the irrational housing valuations lured homeowners into the habit of treating their homes as ATMs to cash out on rapidly-rising equity, which crashed out in 2008.

But the deficit crisis didn’t come from a reduction in federal income-tax revenue from George Bush’s tax policies, as we can see above.  As far as relating it today, we have no new emerging market on the scale of the Internet on which to count for future economic growth, at least not at the moment, to balance out the constrictive impact of seizing more capital through tax hikes.

Nor is that the only bit of ill-informed Clinton nostalgia of late.  On NBC’s Meet the Press last Sunday, the roundtable argued that Clinton balanced the budget mainly on defense cuts.  Cato’s Steve Hanke says Clinton did have the largest reduction in federal spending in the past 60 years as measured in percentage of GDP, but the reduction came primarily from domestic cuts – not defense.

I can’t tell you how much I want to punch John Boehner in his little girl-mouth for caving in to Obama’s demand for higher taxes. Especially without a penny of spending cuts.

This cannot be said enough: We do not have a revenue problem. Congress doesn’t need a single penny more of our money than they are currently stealing. What we have is a spending problem.