Good references, Bucco. But I think we have to consider economic theory in the context of where our economy currently stands. We can (and should) substantially cut federal expenditures. It doesn't appear that this will happen with this Congress. It's not a political party thing. If the GOP wanted to stalemate spending bills, they'd have a good chance in the Senate, even now. The president could veto outrageous spending legislation. I think I know why he didn't with the recent partial year omnibus bill. The next one will paint a more accurate picture of his intent. But as a political commentator described on CNN last night, when he called the office of a Congressional leader to inquire about earmarks, he was blown off in very foul and profane terms. He was told, "...all we have here in Washington has is TV cameras to speak to, lobbyists to help us out and earmarks. What the #@*% do you want from us? You want us to give up what little we have?" That probably defines the attitude of the present bunch pretty well.

But on to my reactions to your articles...

First, and again in the context of our present economic condition, of eleven major developed countries that we trade with, we've already got the lowest top marginal tax rate. With our economy as sick as it is, cutting taxes and incurring even more debt to finance deficits is not a reasonable alternative. I never thought that either Presidential candidate could actually cut taxes, and that was before the economy tanked right at the end of the campaign. I was right--President Obama actually raised tax revenues by increasing the rate on the wealthiest and decreasing the rate on those that pay little or no taxes anyway. That's pretty much what had to be done to begin to whittle away at the deficit and the national debt. More tax increases will likely be needed. Even if we raised our top marginal rate by 5 full percentage points, still only India and South Korea would have lower rates among our major trading partners.

There's something else wrong and that's the amount of money the U.S. spends. Whether it be military expenditures or plain old pork, our political leaders still haven't gotten the message. They won't until they're voted out of office (unlikely) or the rest of the world begins to balk at lending us more money to finance our irresponsibility (more likely).

Your second chart, showing how much the top 1% has contributed to tax revenues is a little misleading. My guess is that if we had charts organized by quartile of taxpayers, we'd see a much steeper line upwards by the middle class than by the wealthiest quarter of taxpayers, particularly in the last decade or so.

I have wondered why our government so clearly changed it methods of financing government around the beginning of the 1990's. Many say that the growth of influence by lobbyists dates to Congressional leaders like Representative Tom DeLay of Texas who began a campaign to fill the capital's K Street corridor with Republican lobbyists, and made it plain that those seeking to influence legislation would have to "pay to play" in the form of political contributions.

Since only 1998 the number of registered lobbyists has increased by more than 50% and the amount they've spent lobbying for their special interest clients has more than doubled. In fact, if you simply take the expenditures shown on the chart at http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/ and divide by the members of Congress, it amounts to over $6 million for each and every member of Congress in 2008.

It's no wonder that our elected representatives seem to serve interests other than our own.