After pressure from Senate Republicans, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service withdrew a report that found no evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy spur economic growth.
The New York Times reported Thursday that the CRS pulled the report in September, "against the advice of the agency’s economic team leadership," after Republican protests.
"The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth," the report concluded. "The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie."
From the Times:
"Republicans did not say whether they had asked the research service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, to take the report out of circulation, but they were clear that they protested its tone and findings.
Don Stewart, a spokesman for the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said Mr. McConnell and other senators 'raised concerns about the methodology and other flaws.' Mr. Stewart added that people outside of Congress had also criticized the study and that officials at the research service 'decided, on their own, to pull the study pending further review.'"
“I wasn’t involved in the decision, as a matter of fact I was on vacation when the decision was made, so I can’t really add anything to what was reported in the NY Times,” Thomas Hungerford, who wrote the study, told TPM. “However, I certainly stand behind my work.”
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