Taxes have gone up more rapidly under President Clinton than at any time since the late 1970s. While real median incomes have remained unchanged, taxes paid by individuals have increased 25.3 percent since 1992.

This situation prompted Bruce Bartlett of the National Center for Policy Analysis to suggest a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut to bring federal receipts as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) back to the proportions they were in 1992. Republican leaders are reported to be considering the proposal quite seriously.

Some of Bartlett's and NCPA's findings:

• Thanks to double-digit inflation and a tax code that was not indexed for inflation, federal receipts rose from 18.2 percent of GDP in 1975 to 20.2 percent in 1980.

• By 1981, federal receipts reached their highest level in American history at 20.8 percent of GDP.

• Even during World War II and the Vietnam war, federal receipts took in only 20.1 and 20.3 percent of GDP, respectively.

• But President Clinton's 1993 tax increase raised the proportion from 19.2 percent of GDP in President Bush's term to 20.4 percent in 1995 -- the second highest level in U.S. history.

• When President Reagan cut tax rates by 25 percent across-the-board to encourage savings, investment and production, the result was economic growth.

• By 1984, real GDP growth reached 6.8 percent -- the highest single year growth rate since 1951.

• In Reagan's second term, growth averaged 3.4 percent a year -- well above the 2.5 percent average of the last three Clinton years.

• President Kennedy's tax cuts of the early 1960s resulted in real GDP growth of 5.8 percent in 1964 and 6.4 percent in 1965 and 1966.

None need fear a negative impact on efforts to balance the federal budget, according to economists, since history shows that tax cuts stimulate economic activity, which increases the tax base, resulting in higher government revenues.

• The growth of real tax revenues was 65 percent higher per year in the low-tax-rate 1980s, than in the high-tax-rate 1990s.

• From 1982 to 1989, inflation-adjusted federal revenues expanded by an average of 3.8 percent per year, despite a sharp reduction in tax rates.

• By contrast, during the 1990-95 period, in which the top tax rate shot up 50 percent, federal revenues expanded by only 2.3 percent annually.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, the Treasury would collect an average of $30 billion more in tax revenue per year if growth increased 0.5 percent over projections.

Thus, if a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut were to result in additional growth of just 1 percent (or just one-fourth of the average annual GDP growth which occurred following the Reagan an Kennedy marginal rate cuts), revenues would offset between one-half and two-thirds of the tax cut's $80 billion to $90 billion annual cost.

Source: Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI), "A Pro-Growth Tax Plan," Wall Street Journal, May 20, 1996.