The report Mitch McConnell doesn't want you to see
By Will Femia
Fri Nov 2, 2012 9:37 PM EDT.
See earlier coverage by Steve Benen:
•When the GOP suppresses inconvenient truths
•'This has hues of a banana republic'
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/
Congressional Research Service: Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945 (pdf)
from page 9:
The scattered points, however, generally are not close to the fitted values line indicating that the
association between GDP growth and the top tax rates is not strong. Furthermore, the observed
positive association between real GDP growth and the top tax rates shown in the figure could be
coincidental or spurious because of changes to the U.S. economy over the past 65 years. The
statistical analysis using multivariate regression (reported in Table A-1) does not find that either
top tax rate has a statistically significant association with the real GDP growth rate.
These results are generally consistent with previous research on tax cuts. Some studies find that a
broad based tax rate reduction has a small to modest, positive effect on economic growth.
Other studies have found that a broad based tax reduction, such as the Bush tax cuts, has no effect on economic growth. It would be reasonable to assume that a tax rate change limited to a small
group of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution would have a negligible effect on
economic growth.
http://www.dpcc.senate.gov/files/documents/CRSTaxesandtheEconomy%20Top%20Rates.pdf