difference between debt and deficit? When I've given you no reason to think so? And you follow it up with this chart of projections, not actual deficit changes? Yes, I'm well aware the $1.5T was a projection of what would be added to the debt over 10 yrs of deficit increases. I'm also well aware that when you have a tax cut, your revenues will initially drop to front load those deficit increases, and even your projections confirm that. The theory is the increased growth will return you to higher revenue levels than before, and growing faster than before. And that's exactly what's happened with every tax cut from JFK to W. More to the point, it happened much faster with these tax cuts than ever before, and much faster than even I expected. But even if you take a simplistic $150B/yr added, as opposed to the $242B and $292B in your chart, that didn't happen because of the tax cuts.

But here's the problem, you're looking at projections, not actual. For FY19, they are projecting just under $200B drop in revenues (285-88 growth). In reality revenue for FY19 grew $130B ($3.46T vs $3.33T). And for FY18, the first year under the cuts, they projected about $160B in net revenue drop. Revenues actually went up $10T from FY17.

The only way you can actually add to the deficit is by spending more than you take in. Projections do not add one penny to the actual debt. Nor does a shortfall from what you projected revenue would be had tax cuts not occurred. When your revenues are back at and above where they were before the cuts, when they're growing faster than they were before the cuts, and most importantly when your spending grew more than your deficit grew, you literally cannot blame the tax cuts for that deficit increase. You can't increase spending $500B, and grow revenues $100B for example, and then blame the revenues for that $400B increase in the deficit. At best you can try to argue deficit growth would've been less had they not had the tax cuts, but that remains a projection, not an actual change in the deficit. And that projection could be just as wrong as the ones in the chart above.

With all that said, I am not opposed to raising taxes. I am opposed to the false narrative that these tax cuts added to the deficit increases. If I were King for a Day, I would add a flat % to taxes (say 5% for a number) to everyone over $20K or $30K. And I would cut spending at least $3 for every $1 of tax increase, flat cuts across the board if you must because we don't have the gonads to make tough choices. And keep that in place until we get back to a surplus in 5-10 yrs, or at least a reasonable sustainable level of deficit like that which we saw at times under W. Yes it's a ridiculously simplistic approach, but at least it would be a whole lot better than the garbage we saw the last 4 yrs, or even worse, the 8 before that.