The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has published the definitive case against the claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. Here are the key findings from the report:

-Despite recent statements by the President, Vice President, and certain Congressional leaders that tax cuts pay for themselves by stimulating economic growth, revenues over the past three years were a combined $316 billion below the levels that the Administration projected before enactment of the 2003 tax cuts.

-During the current recovery, both revenues and economic growth have been weaker than in the typical post-World War II recovery. Revenues over the economic recovery so far have fallen at an annual rate of 0.6 percent, after adjusting for inflation and population growth. During the average post-World War II recovery, revenues grew at an annual real per-person rate of 2.7 percent.

-Revenues grew much more quickly in the 1990s, when taxes were raised, than in the 1980s, when taxes were cut. Revenues in the current decade, with its tax cuts, are also expected to grow slowly. Based on the Administration’s own projections of revenue growth through the end of the decade, revenues in the current decade will grow at only about one fifth their growth rate in the 1990s.

-Economists from across the political spectrum, including the Administration’s own former chief economist, strongly reject the notion that tax cuts pay for themselves.