There's nothing else to work with except projections. We don't have all the 2003 numbers yet.

Note that the tax cut table numbers are based on a percentage of revenues, so that lower revenues would result in smaller tax cut "losses."

That is, if revenues in 2003 were less than projected, the "loss" due to the tax cut would be LESS than the $81 billion shown in the table. If new tax cuts are passed, the rest of the table is garbage, which is why I'm not using any number past 2003.

In any case, for the numbers for 2002 and 2003, the projections are probably pretty close.

The problem with CBO and other projections is that they always seem to be based on the current year projected forward forever. Remember that the deficits in the early 90s were assumed to go beyond the turn of the century. At the beginning of the Clinton administration no Democrat believed that the budget could be balanced in less than ten years. Nobody saw the stock market driven surpluses coming. Equally, when the surpluses were going in the late 1990s, they were assumed to go on forever too.

I remember that the Democrats didn't like tax cuts in a surplus environment either. What does that mean?