"Beach and Hodge turned the clock back to January 1993, before the new administration pushed the $241 billion tax hike through the 103rd Congress. Without getting into all of the mind-numbing technical details, they then ran the model on "fast-forward," asking it to tell them what the economy would look like today if tax and budget policy had not been changed in 1993.
What they found was not good news for the White House.
They found that another 1.2 million Americans would have jobs today if the economy hadn't been saddled with the tax increase. They learned that the U.S. auto industry would have built and sold an additional 1.1 million new cars and light trucks. And they learned that the typical U.S. wage-earner would have taken home an additional $2,600 in after-tax income.
The big numbers are equally disturbing. For example: The overall U.S. economy would have grown an additional $208 billion between 1993 and 1996. And business investment -- the key factor in creating jobs -- would have been $42.5 billion higher.
While there has been some quibbling about the exact details of the Beach/Hodge findings, the overall thrust of their work remains unchallenged: Tax hikes hurt, and the huge 1993 tax hike hurt big time."