If tax cuts don't help the economy, whom do they help?

The Return Of Voodoo Economics
Republicans Ignore Their Experts on the Cost of Tax Cuts

By Sebastian Mallaby
Washington Post
Monday, May 15, 2006; A17

Nobody serious believes that tax cuts pay for themselves, as I noted last week. But most senior Republicans flunk this test of seriousness....

[L]ast December, the CBO [Congressional Budet Office] estimated the extent to which a 10 percent reduction in personal taxes might pay for itself. The conclusions confirm that the free-lunch mantra is just plain wrong. On the most optimistic assumptions it could muster, the CBO found that tax cuts would stimulate enough economic growth to replace 22 percent of lost revenue in the first five years and 32 percent in the second five. On pessimistic assumptions, the growth effects of tax cuts did nothing to offset revenue loss.

(The entire article is here.)