RUTHFULLY YOURS

Back in March, unnamed “senior tax officials” told the Washington Post that the “rapid demolition of parts of the IRS” was going to result in a 10% plunge in revenues this spring.

Actual result: Revenues are up 9% compared with the first four months of last year.

We heard repeated horror stories about DOGE’s devastating spending cuts, too.

Actual result: Spending is up 7% over last year.

Are you noticing a trend here?

According to the Washington Post, “Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.”

That story was published on March 22 and was widely covered by the rest of the corporate media.

So … just how accurate were these “three people with knowledge of tax projections”?

The Treasury Department’s latest monthly report, which came out Monday, shows that from January through April, the federal government raised more than $2 trillion in taxes. That compares with $1.86 trillion over those same months in 2024.

Instead of a loss of $500 billion that the Post’s “senior tax officials” were predicting, revenues were up by more than $170 billion.

Individual income tax receipts alone rose by more than $116 billion, and corporate income tax revenue was $14 billion higher. Payroll taxes were up more than $20 billion. Customs duties were up by more than $13 billion, largely due to Trump’s tariffs.

Do you think the Washington Post will bother to go back and ask those unnamed experts how they screwed up so badly? Will the paper issue an apology for needlessly stirring up public anxiety?

Can pigs fly?

The same thing can be said on the spending side. Even while reporters were filing stories about “devastating” spending cuts, actual spending was coming in higher than the year before.

Outlays from January through April totaled nearly $2.4 trillion. That compares with $2.2 trillion last year.

True, there are some areas that have seen a reduction in spending, such as – thankfully – the Education Department. Only in Washington can people claim the government is being cut to the bone when it spends $200 billion more in just four months than it did the year before.

The Post also predicted in March that the government would have to borrow more because of a huge fall-off in revenue.

Turns out that the deficit in the first four months of this year was $7.4 billion smaller than the same months last year.

All of this raises a question in our minds:

How many times do Washington “insiders” and “experts” and a gullible corporate media have to be proved wrong before people stop listening to them?