In a conversation about gas mileage, Charles Gibson showed he does have some understanding of how when a pie gets bigger, predictions done with static scoring, instead of dynamic scoring, are wildly inaccurate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t apply the same common sense to the affect of tax cuts on the federal deficit.
On this morning’s "Good Morning America" Gibson quizzed GMA financial contributor Mellody Hobson about the new fuel efficiency standards, "Mellody, when you do the math, first of all, we've had increases in mileage requirements in the past and I don't know that it's done anything to break our addiction to foreign oil. And secondly, if you run the math, they're increasing the requirements by 2.4 miles per gallon for SUVs and light pickup trucks over five years. That's an 11 percent improvement over five years. That's not much, is it?"
Hobson was more optimistic, "Well, again, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It's a start. When you think about the savings between 2008 and 2011, we will save about 10.7 billion gallons of gasoline through this increase in mileage, in this fuel efficiency increase. Now, you might say to yourself, that's a huge number--"
Gibson interrupted, "If, if we stay at a constant number of cars, but there's going to be more cars."
Gibson clearly understands that more cars will lead to more gasoline consumption other things being equal, but what does he think a larger economy will mean for tax revenues?
Digging through the MRC archives provides the answer. The January 22, 2004, CyberAlert captured Gibson voicing his antiquated, liberal view on tax cuts, "The President last night called for making the tax cuts permanent. Is that, in a sense, making deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars permanent?"
Tax cuts focused on spurring economic growth, supply-side tax cuts, will create more growth, more revenues and smaller deficits, assuming Washington doesn’t spend over the increasing revenues.
