The Heritage Foundation Said The Bush Tax Cuts Would Pay Off The National Debt By 2010

http://www.businessinsider.com/about-that-time-the-heritage-foundation-said-the-bush-tax-cuts-would-pay-off-the-natioanl-debt-by-2010-2012-11?0=moneygame

Rob Wile | Nov. 19, 2012

Did you hear the one about the Heritage Foundation predicting the Bush tax cuts paying off the national debt?

It happened, in 2001.

A link from Travis Thornton Tweeted by Reason magazine editor Matt Welch has prompted us to revisit their idea.

A decade ago, the nation's debt stood at $3.1 trillion.

According to Foundation analysts D. Mark Wilson and William W. Beach, the cuts would achieve the following results (among others):

"Significantly increase economic growth" by 0.2 percentage points per year through 2010.

"Substantially increase family income" by $4,544 through 2010.

"Increase family savings" to $1,017 by 2010.

And in a manner left unexplained, the above phenomena will wipe out the debt:

The Bush plan would decrease federal debt to the lowest possible level at which it could be redeemed--$818 billion in FY 2011 (see Chart 4).25 From FY 2001 to FY 2011, federal debt as a percentage of GDP would decline from 30.5 percent to just 4.7 percent under the plan.