For years, advocates of supply-side economics have justified repeated calls for tax cuts for high earners by arguing the cuts will pay for themselves by dramatically boosting economic growth and thus tax revenues. They have just as adamantly insisted that if only Capitol Hill’s official arbiter of the budgets, the Congressional Budget Office, would evaluate tax cuts through the prism of “dynamic scoring” — which projects the macroeconomic impact of tax cuts as well as the lost revenues they produce — their point of view would be vindicated. Well, CBO has done just that with President Bush’s budget, and guess what? In a report prepared under the supervision of a supply-side economist handpicked by the White House and published last week, CBO concluded the president’s budget would make long-term budget deficits worse rather than better.

voodoo economics officially dead