Tax Rates are Not Lower. Tax Revenues are.

The new meme issuing from the White House is that tax rates are at historically low levels (E.J. Dionne burbled this in his last idiotic column). As the Washington Examiner points out, this is hogwash (h/t: Insty). What's low is tax revenues as a percentage of GDP.

And why?

But the AP went on to report that the recession and tax loopholes, not lower tax rates, were the cause of the revenue drop: “The poor economy is largely to blame, with corporate profits down and unemployment up. But so is a tax code that grows each year with new deductions, credits and exemptions.”

So the Democrats are using the current degraded state of the economy as justification for continued reckless, ineffective spending. And are now prepared to waste the nation's time in a fruitless game of whack-a-loophole instead of reforming the tax code.

Hope. Change.