CNS News is reporting that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has predicted that federal revenues for 2013 will exceed $2.7 trillion in 2013, slightly higher than the $2.6 trillion the government collected in 2007, when the last recession officially began.

The article reports:

Government revenues had fallen by nearly $500 billion during the recession to $2.1 trillion in 2009, contributing to the $1.5 trillion deficit that year. However, federal revenues have been recovering since the recession ended in June 2009, and the CBO now projects that they will slightly eclipse their pre-recession peak.

In fact, the $2.7 trillion in revenue will be the most money the federal government has collected in history.

Obviously, if government revenue is the highest it has ever been in history, why do we have to increase taxes?

The article reports:

“Democrats say we should replace the president’s ‘sequester’ with revenue increases, or delay it.  Republicans say we should replace [it] with responsible reforms that will help put us on a path to balance the budget in 10 years,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Frankly, I would love to see federal revenues increase, but I am not convinced they will. Unemployment is still high, and the number of people working part-time who want to work full-time is at an all time high. Much of the revenue the government gets comes from personal income taxes, and if the unemployment situation does not change, I don’t think the revenues will change significantly. The CBO does its calculations based on the numbers it is given. It would be interesting to know where they got the numbers that convinced them 2013 was going to be a banner year for tax revenue.