The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy is a non-profit, non-partisan "think tank" that works on tax issues and identifies what this or that tax cut or hike means for the economy. They tend to get cited a lot by both Democrats and Republicans when either party can use the group's findings to support what they want to do.
As Kevin Drum notes, they recently analyzed the numbers on all the G.O.P. tax cuts since the year 2000 and concluded that most of the benefits went to the rich. Well, duh. Is there anyone reading this who couldn't have told them that without crunching any digits? But what's interesting is that as Drum notes…
ITEP figures that total taxes paid in 2018 are about $600 billion less than they would be if we had just left the tax code alone. That's nearly the entire federal deficit projected for this year.
Just to make sure you get that: Republican tax cuts since 2000 are responsible for nearly the entire federal deficit. Repeal them all and the budget would be almost balanced.
I would imagine that if you went to any Republican leader and said, "You've always said deficits are bad and we should have a balanced budget so what about this?", the answer would be something about how, yes, "Maybe the numbers do break down that way but these cuts will stimulate the economy and eventually, we'll have not only that balanced budget but a surplus!" And then that will never happen. Because no one ever cares about deficits when they're the ones running them up. My deficits are fine. It's your deficits that will destroy America.