In a spirited debate over in this recent article: You Can't Balance the Budget By Increasing Social Spending I stated that complaints from the clueless old and liberal side of the aisle about revenue projections, or more specifically about statements of lost revenue during the Bush administration (especially related to revenues lost thanks to Bush's tax-cuts) were "bull-excrement" (my words).  Why would I state such things?

Well, because that is the truth.

Let me remind some folks of articles in the news, such as this one (from the Washington Post): Revenue Collections Hit Record in April {2007} which is similarly echoed via MSNBC/AP news here: Revenue collections hit record high in April (which unfortunately is appropriately sub-titled: Government spending also at an all-time high)

But lets think on this for just a second or two -- aren't we smack dab in the middle of some of the biggest parts of the Bush tax-cuts right about now?  Uh, yes.  Maybe not the absolute maximum effect of the cuts, but not far from same, and yet we are seeing record revenues come into the Federal coffers.

So why then are liberals not happy about this and why are they complaining about lost revenues?  Well that would be because they love nothing better than to cry foul about the idea that cutting taxes leads to increases in revenue, except perhaps for the idea of counting on revenue that doesn't actually exist and using that revenue in projections, budgets, etc.  Please remember here that liberals love counting chickens before they've even reached the embryonic stages (perhaps that's why so many of them seem to be in favor of embryonic stem cell research, but who knows {blink, blink})...

I stated in my replies in the article linked above that counting on revenues is stupid and reckless and it is.  Projections of revenue for the federal government comes from projections of income that can be taxed and of course liberals always expect there to be plenty of income and productivity to be taxed out of the system.  What they never remember is that those that work harder or smarter can be quite adept at finding ways of keeping their income from being counted as income, perhaps through investment, perhaps just by leaving the potential income alone until it can be had at a much more favorable tax rate (which is something that happened during many of Clinton's years, as people waited for the next part of the cycle when rates would be cut and they could take profit without paying too high a penalty for doing so).

I'll try to clear things up for the liberals out there.  7 is more than 5.  8 is more than 7.  9 is more than 8.  And so on, and so on, ad infinitum.  Bigger is more.  More revenues are coming into the federal government than ever before. There is no denying that fact.  Trying to rewrite history or claim that isn't the case is like crying because your budget was cut this year because you didn't get the inflationary adjustment you were hoping for (but you still got more actual revenue than before).  On that budget thing, I've seen that time and again, and cries from the liberals that many budgets were slashed.  Oh really?  When a department like say Department of Agriculture gets $10 billion one year, and then next they get $10.1 billion, that is a cut?!?  Oh yes sayeth the liberals as they complain about inflation eating up the $0.1 billion increase that was real.

Lets keep it simple here.  More is not less in the real world.  In liberal land (i.e., fantasy land) you might claim so, but such claims are unfounded and factually incorrect, despite statements that claim such-and-such a leader says otherwise.