Following on from the earlier post on tax cuts for the rich

Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who spends a lot of time stoking fear about deficits under President Obama, explained on MSNBC this morning that the “difference” between President Bush and Obama is that Obama is spending far too much.

King is about right wing as they get in Congress on everything and anything. It gets him a lot of press but little else.

The current meme among most Republicans is that every bit of spending has to be 'paid for' by budget cuts elsewhere except for tax cuts. Here's what he said.

They have stimulated the economy. It is not paid for with offsets, those tax cuts have been in place as you characterized them, since May 28th of 2003. This is a continuation of a tax policy, so I would say you don’t have to ask for a paid-for continued tax policy. This is a tax increase if we let this happen without doing something happen about it. They have also demonstrated they increase in revenue with the capital gains as a part of that.

Here is a graph that shows just how out to lunch King is.  The graph shows individual tax receipts as a percentage of GDP.   Since the Bush tax cuts it has declined from a little more than 10% to a little more than 6%.   Numbers don't lie, politicians do.