Republicans fight reality with rhetoric once again

The Republican Joint Economic Committee recently released an article entitled: Historical Tax Rates: Rhetoric vs. Reality. This article was an attempt to attack a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report which found that changing the top marginal tax rate had little effect on the economy. The problem is, that despite this article's title alleging combating rhetoric with reality, the Republican article is full of its own rhetoric and its own misleading statistics. But to be nice I will start with the one thing that they correctly stated:

While the effective marginal income tax rate is more relevant than the top statutory income tax rate, neither rate fully reflects the overall burden of taxation on the economy. A comprehensive measure would include every kind of tax (income, sales, property, estate, etc.) collected at every level of government (federal, state, and local). Without a more complete measure, it is impossible to accurately determine how much or how little taxes affect the economy. (emphasis added)

You would think that after pointing out that it is impossible to accurately determine how taxes affect the economy without comprehensive analysis that Republicans would stop their parties mantra that increasing tax rates will negatively impact the economy. You would also think that they would then advocate doing more research to determine the effects of higher taxes on the economy. But rather than waiting for that sort of analysis they put on their hypocrite pants and state:

Given the much greater share of income now subject to the top [tax] rate, any future [tax] rate increase will have a much greater effect on the economy.

It doesn't get much worse than this when an article waits only 4 paragraphs to completely contradict itself. I wonder whether the authors merely forgot that they wrote it was impossible to accurately determine how much or little taxes effect the economy without more data or whether they are just so trapped in their own ideological world that they forgot reality also applies to them.

Lets Redefine Marriage

American progress has been characterized by redefining our notions of equality. When we founded this nation equality was limited to white males and freedom was limited by the color of your skin. As we have grown as a nation we have redefined these words and we are better for it. Slowly, we changed our understanding of freedom to include all races not just people of European descent. If we had not changed our definition of freedom to include all people we would still have slaves today.

We also changed our definitions of equality. No longer do we treat only white men as equal. We have expanded our definition of equality to include all races, women, and men. If we had not women would still be forbidden from voting and segregation would still plague our society.

Social progress is itself defined as changing the definitions of our most sacred institutions to create a more equal and loving society. This is one of the greatest things about our Nation. Despite our history of discrimination and hate, we have grown as a nation to become more accepting of outsiders and different points of view. Over and over we have redefined words such as equality and freedom to become more inclusive of the differences between us.