But 1993 was widely known as a tax increase, and 1997, 2001, and 2003 as tax cuts. From looking at the receipts as % of GDP, 1993 and 2001 had a big, sustained, impact, and 1997 and 2003 was a minor blip at best. But 1997 and 2003 were MEANT to be tax cuts. Of course the CBO is going to forecast a revenue decrease. Unless we're all living in Lafferland now, where tax cuts equal revenue increases, usually the point of a tax cut is for revenues to go down. If the bills were meant to be that way, of course they are going to forecast that way, otherwise they wouldn't have passed the bill. 1997 and 2003 were Republican bills anyway, so why would "left-leaning" projections have anything to do with it? And you haven't addressed 1993. Are you saying the CBO forecast a revenue decline with that bill?

I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Even if this is true, what should the U.S. do about it?

You conflated a lot of issues here. It's S.O.P. for Republicans to justify tax cuts on the grounds that such cuts will lead to economic growth and a net increase in tax revenue. There's often been an inverse relationship between tax rates and tax revenues, a lesson the CBO has been slow to learn.

Even if this is true, what should the U.S. do about it?

Even if this is true, what should the U.S. do about it?

There's something really slippery about that answer. For GW skeptics, they win both ways: Either it's not real so we shouldn't do anything about it, or it IS real but we shouldn't anything about it.

It's S.O.P. for Republicans to justify tax cuts on the grounds that such cuts will lead to economic growth and a net increase in tax revenue.

All the human philosophy and all the fantasies about our intellectual superiority over cockroaches and black labs are pretty much for naught at that point.

If the only way to stop GW were to engage in a war that killed a billion people, would it be worth it? If a billion is too high, what number isn't? I think these are important questions to answer.

Even if this is true, what should the U.S. do about it?

Show some world leadership? Not drag our feet, but rather join with those countries who will get on board and begin to pressure those that are not - you know like we do with a ton of things.

The right-wing has been insane on this issue

There's often been an inverse relationship between tax rates and tax revenues

What is a right-wing meme that has no connection to actual reality?

More likely in the '60s when the top marginal rate was cut from 90% to 70%. Remember how Eisenhower was totally a socialist?

"When our health care costs are completely out of control. Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent. You spend 8 percent of GDP on health care. And you’re a pretty healthy nation," Romney told donors at a fundraiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, speaking of a health care system that is compulsory for Israelis and funded by the government. "We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, let me compare that with the size of our military. Our military budget is 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of GDP. We have to find ways, not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to finally manage our health care costs."

"When our health care costs are completely out of control. Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the GDP in Israel? 8 percent. You spend 8 percent of GDP on health care. And you’re a pretty healthy nation," Romney told donors at a fundraiser at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, speaking of a health care system that is compulsory for Israelis and funded by the government. "We spend 18 percent of our GDP on health care. 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, let me compare that with the size of our military. Our military budget is 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of GDP. We have to find ways, not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to finally manage our health care costs."

The mind boggles.

What. A. Tool.

We have right-wingers here who went from "global warming is not real" to "global warming is real but not manmade" to "global warming is real and manmade but STFU there's noting we can do about it",

This is entirely incorrect. The relationship between tax rates and tax revenues is pretty close to linear for any tax rate we've experienced in the last 100 years.

We have right-wingers here who went from "global warming is not real" to "global warming is real but not manmade" to "global warming is real and manmade but STFU there's noting we can do about it",

Well, that's what's just so jaw-dropping about this. There are two, and only two, explanations for him to publicly say what he's saying here about health care:

a) He is dumber than a solid redwood fencepost

or

b) He is spectacularly hypocritical, even for a politician

Although I suppose both could be true.

b) He is spectacularly hypocritical, even for a politician

We have right-wingers here who went from "global warming is not real" to "global warming is real but not manmade" to "global warming is real and manmade but STFU there's noting we can do about it",

Where did this sequencing happen? In your head?

Except, of course, for all the times that cutting tax rates led to a net increase in tax revenue.

We have right-wingers here

No, in an NYT op-ed piece by one of the most well-known GW skeptics in the world, and in CB's subsequent reply. Are you not keeping up with the thread?

Except, of course, for all the times that cutting tax rates led to a net increase in tax revenue.

Show some world leadership? Not drag our feet, but rather join with those countries who will get on board and begin to pressure those that are not - you know like we do with a ton of things.

Unsurprisingly, this is incredibly dishonest. No one's position here has changed.

Reading liberal commentary about global warming is a reminder of how naive they are about basic things like reality and human nature.

No, in an NYT op-ed piece by one of the most well-known GW skeptics in the world, and in CB's subsequent reply. Are you not keeping up with the thread?

if lowering tax rates actually increased revenue

Just from a first principles point of view: if lowering tax rates actually increased revenue, then yes, everyone would be on board.

We're not talking about you or Ray or CB, we're talking about Richard Muller, who started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project to disprove global warming and ended up not only convinced that it is happening, but that the change is anthropogenic.

Reading liberal commentary about global warming is a reminder of how naive they are about basic things like reality and human nature.

This is why we can't have nice things, like civil discussions.

I never remotely suggested that lowering taxes always resulted in a net increase in tax revenue. That's absurd. All I did was point out three specific examples of the CBO's projections being wrong.

Especially since all the examples that followed had almost nothing to do with Liberal anything. Unless the naive bit was expecting humans to not be shortsighted, but that is kind of the point of being progressive.

The purpose of the CBO is not to tell the future. It's to provide a impartial rubric to score congressional bills so that the American people can judge the potential cost of legislation on a comprehensive and coherent framework. The CBO missed on the tech boom, they missed on the great recession and they most likely will miss on the next large, unexpected economic event. That's not really a very good criticism of them.

Just from a first principles point of view: if lowering tax rates actually increased revenue, then yes, everyone would be on board.

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

We have right-wingers here

Even if this is true, what should the U.S. do about it? It would be idiotic for the U.S. to undertake the environmental equivalent of unilateral disarmament. Without all of the world's major economies getting on board, anything the U.S. does would be futile. (And make no mistake: Developing countries aren't going to sacrifice their improving standard of living in 2012 to help prevent the Earth's temperature from possibly rising by 2 degrees by 2050.)

But now liberals expect the entire world to agree to drastically reduce its standard of living in order to ward off hypothetical adverse effects some 25 or 50 or a hundred years down the road.

The point was, when humanity has had little success solving relatively small, obvious problems, it's patently absurd to expect humanity to band together, across ~200 national borders, to solve the biggest problem known to humanity (i.e., if liberal climate-change claims are correct).

both Israelis and Palestinians argued that Romney misunderstood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“It seems to me [Romney] lacks information, knowledge, vision, and understanding of this region and its people,” Saeb Erekat, a senior aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, told The Associated Press. “He also lacks knowledge about the Israelis themselves.”

Even Israelis themselves thought the statement could have been more artful and cognizant of the nuances of the age-old conflict. “I might have put it a bit differently,” Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., told the Daily Beast. “There’s no doubt about Israel’s economic achievement over the years, but I would not compare that to the Palestinian economy because obviously the Palestinian economy operates under different conditions.”

if liberal climate-change claims are correct

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased

What you've done is set up a scenario where, once you finally come around to admitting what the rest of the world has long since accepted, you've insulated the US from any sort of culpability both in causing global warming and addressing it. The US bears the biggest burden for taking steps to correct the problem, because the US has been the biggest contributor to its existence.

Again, if you were willing to engage on the issue a decade ago, we would have already started taking small steps to curb emissions. Small steps won't get us all of the way there, but they're better than the current anti-science-induced paralysis we've had so far.

If Joe is going to take every post by an individual leftish person here and turn it into a strange soliloquy on the nature of the left, I'll take his leave to do the same here.

It isn't controversial. What it is is stupid.

If the CBO's mission isn't to predict the future, then the CBO should flatly decline to do so. Otherwise, churning out 10-year projections that end up being off by 1,000 percent succeed only in undermining its credibility.

I didn't claim cockpit doors or Katrina planning were liberal issues. The point was, when humanity has had little success solving relatively small, obvious problems, it's patently absurd to expect humanity to band together, across ~200 national borders, to solve the biggest problem known to humanity (i.e., if liberal climate-change claims are correct).

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased
This isn't true.

What do you personally think about the claim that humans are affecting climate change and the planet negatively, and we could therefore also change it positively?

I didn't believe it was remotely controversial to describe climate change as a liberal issue.

If the "rest of the world has long since accepted" the liberal theory on climate change, then why is there any need for U.S. leadership? Why haven't developing economies imposed draconian regulations on so-called dirty energy? Why is gas 10 cents per liter in Venezuela instead of $5? Why hasn't Mexico banned 1980s gas guzzlers from its roads? Why haven't dozens of countries banned private planes from their airspace?

Ah, the old "small steps" argument. If the liberal elites care so much about this, why do they still jet around in private planes? Why do they have 50,000-square-foot mansions (or even 3,000-square-foot homes) and gas-guzzling Bentleys and limos? Hell, why do they have cars at all?

There's nothing stopping liberals from sending in extra money in taxes — but they don't.

If it's only a small cost, the changes aren't likely to do any good - global warming being such a Big OMIGOD Problem and all - and if it's a large cost, then there's a greater chance that the cost won't be worth it.

No more squeamish than you are at the increasing evidence the liberals are correct on this issue.

And your sweeping diversions about "liberal elites" (and snide dismissal of "small steps") notwithstanding, plenty of non-elite people (myself included) have changed (if not "drastically reduced") their standards of living (given up cars, etc.), in part out of concern over their carbon footprints.

Re: Capital Gains:
Gibson's claim isn't exactly true.

The first half of that claim is childish. Even if we're affecting climate change "negatively," that is being done in the furtherance of people leading good and worthy lives. I don't accept the liberal premise that this is a bad thing.

And we're part of the planet, just like any other species or natural force on the planet.

The second half of the claim sounds very romantic - "we could therefore also change it positively" - but it utterly avoids the issue of the cost of changing it. If it's only a small cost, the changes aren't likely to do any good - global warming being such a Big OMIGOD Problem and all - and if it's a large cost, then there's a greater chance that the cost won't be worth it.

And why do "we" - as the U.S. - have to take the lead in this? Let other countries lead, and we'll see if we want to follow. That's what so many other countries do to us, after all. We've led plenty of causes around the world, and it's high time for other countries to take the lead and assume the cost.

I'm not squeamish about it at all. In business, being correct means nothing unless you can monetize it. In politics, being correct means nothing unless there's a feasible real-world solution. And as I said above, even if everything liberals claim about climate change is correct, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that 7 billion people will agree to drastically reduce their standard of living in order to avert a hypothetical adverse effect some 25 or 50 or 100 years down the road.

I will gladly say that I have not changed my standard of living one bit in furtherance of this cultish nonsense.

And as I said above, even if everything liberals claim about climate change is correct, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that 7 billion people will agree to drastically reduce their standard of living in order to avert a hypothetical adverse effect some 25 or 50 or 100 years down the road.

I didn't post Gibson's excerpt to establish the truth of his assertions, I posted it to rebut the proposition that everyone would be on board with lowering tax rates if it actually increased revenue. If that were true then Obama's response would have been "Charlie, that's not true". This is not a criticism of Obama; he's a politician and it's good politics to advocate higher taxes on the rich with increased revenues as a secondary-at-best consideration.

2: To the extent it is a political issue, it is a rightwing one- as the rightwingers have taken a scientific issue and rammed it into their political worldview

And why do "we" - as the U.S. - have to take the lead in this? Let other countries lead, and we'll see if we want to follow.

This seriously sounds like something a spoiled 11-year-old would write. I absoluteyl trust from your previous narratives you were not this at 11. But you certainly seem to be one now.

And we're part of the planet, just like any other species or natural force on the planet.

Even if we're affecting climate change "negatively," that is being done in the furtherance of people leading good and worthy lives. I don't accept the liberal premise that this is a bad thing.

But ALL of the people claiming that we have a big problem on our hands that Needs To Be Solved should have already done just that, and drastically, and years ago.

You don't get to stonewall every attempt to address the issue and the say "why haven't you guys addressed the issue?" (well, that's precisely what you'll do, but we get to call you out on it).

So, the answer is do nothing and let someone else sort it out later. Again, morals and ethics.

The rest of the world is living with the climate change that the US induced. I don't know why you're pretending this doesn't matter.

I've traded in my old cars for newer, fuel-efficient cars. I've installed power-saving surge protectors, turn off the power to the house if we're out for more than a few days, cut down on A/C use, etc. But I'm just pissing in the wind because you're not on board, and that's why policy's important.

Ray can speak for himself, but this is nonsense. If, as 'formerlydp' claims, "the rest of the world has long since accepted" the liberal theory on climate change, then why hasn't the rest of the world taken the lead in imposing draconian restrictions on dirty energy? How come China and Brazil and Russia and India haven't seized the moral and environmental high ground? Usually, the rest of the world can't wait to show the U.S. how much better and smarter it is, so how come no major economy wants to be the first mover on this?

Sorry, but the issue of what to do, if anything, is a political one. That's why the politicians are involved.

You know what the "rest of the world" looked like before "dirty" U.S. innovations like factories and cars? The "rest of the world" has made out quite nicely.

Climate scientists do not map neatly onto the idiosyncratic US conservative/liberal political spectrum.

There are some streets in New York that really need to be repaved. WHY AREN'T WE DOING THIS NOW? Why are we DOING NOTHING and letting someone else sort it out later??!?!?!!
Could the answer be... cost?

There are some streets in New York that really need to be repaved. WHY AREN'T WE DOING THIS NOW? Why are we DOING NOTHING and letting someone else sort it out later??!?!?!!

Could the answer be... cost?

there are also wingnut conspiracy theories that a liberal climate change conspiracy exists (and yes you Ray are one of the wingnuts on this issue, so I'm not really talking to you since you are irrational on this specific issue)

Climate scientists do not map neatly onto the idiosyncratic US conservative/liberal political spectrum. It doesn't get more true just because you keep saying it.

What I've claimed is that people will see what they want to see. Liberals see climate change as a problem that MUST BE SOLVED

It can't, at least not with our existing technology and existing energy sources.

a scientist who says "nothing to see here, global warming is not a problem" is likely to get no funding.

Where liberalism comes into play is that liberals never contemplate that doing nothing may be a perfectly legitimate and appropriate response to a problem. Liberals always want to see money changing hands, always want to see behavior or lifestyle alterations forced on to people.

What I've claimed is that scientists are driven by other motivations, such as funding: a scientist who says "nothing to see here, global warming is not a problem" is likely to get no funding. Which is not to say that the scientists are All Lying. I've never made that claim either. But I don't see why a scientist who might be good at identifying a problem is also good at identifying solutions to that problem, solutions which involve, inter alia, weighing the costs and political dynamics involved in solving that problem.

What I've claimed is that people will see what they want to see. Liberals see climate change as a problem that MUST BE SOLVED -- with money and regulations that place heavy burdens and restrictions on people and societies. That is not a conspiracy, but a worldview.

Again, the primary solution proposed as legislation has been cap and trade. This is the exact same system that was proven to be very effective and cost almost nothing with sulfur emissions.

The idea that only "polluters" and not consumers pay for "cap and trade" is funny. Why don't you care about poor people?

I used to think that Romney was a smart guy who just sucked at politics. I'm starting to think he's just a dumbass.