Newsbusters associate editor Noel Sheppard blasts “ignorant” Fareed Zakaria for “the staggering stupidity” of saying the Bush tax cuts are “the single largest part of the black hole that is the federal budget deficit.” But when you look past Sheppard's invective, you see that he is comparing current (well, 2007) revenues to 2000 revenues, rather than to what current revenues would be if the Bush tax cuts hadn't happened:

In fiscal 2000 before the Bush tax cuts, our government brought in $2.025 trillion in unified revenues while spending $1.789 trillion. Seven years later, before the recession hit, we received $2.568 trillion, a 27 percent increase. BUT, our expenditures rose to $2.729 trillion, a 53 percent rise.

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To further illustrate the stupidity on display, even with tax cuts, receipts grew faster than the rate of inflation. BUT, if our elected officials would have kept spending to the rate of inflation during this period, our outlays in 2007 would have totaled $2.154 trillion resulting in a surplus of $414 billion!

Note also that Sheppard is focusing on 2007 because if he focused on 2009, his numbers would show only a 3.95 percent increase in revenues -- not per year, total. (Sheppard notes “In 2009, we brought in $2.105 trillion in tax receipts. Bear in mind that even with a recession this was still greater than BEFORE the Bush tax cuts were implemented.” For some reason, he doesn't tell us what percentage that increase is, or compare it to inflation, as he did with the 2007 figures.)

Note also that Sheppard is completely ignoring the budgetary impact of increased interest payments as a result of debt run up previously -- debt that was run up in part because of the Bush tax cuts. That's a neat little trick -- force the government to spend more money repaying the interest on debt you ran up by cutting taxes, then blame additional spending for growing deficits.