This tax-and-budget analysis from Bruce Bartlett is wrong on many levels — in both its particulars and its overall sweep.

Bartlett claims the famous supply-side tax-cutters at The Wall Street Journal editorial page have, in a major reversal, opened the door to a Value Added Tax and thus a major expansion of overall taxation and American government. He thinks a new Journal opinion article from Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard represents a big shift in the thinking of economic conservatives. I don’t see it that way at all. (more…)

“tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output.”

“tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.”

tax cuts do “not have any clear impact on revenues at horizons beyond about two years.”

– Christina Romer, Berkeley economist and Obama appointee as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, in two working papers, the most recent versions of which are very timely: November 2008 and July 2008.