Rosanne Altshuler (Director, Tax Policy Center), Katherine Lim (Research Assistant, Tax Policy Center) & Roberton Williams (Senior Fellow, Tax Policy Center) presented Desperately Seeking Revenue at the January 15, 2010 conference on Train Wreck: A Conference on America's Looming Fiscal Crisis at USC.  Here is the abstract:

In August 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the federal budget deficit would total $7.1 trillion over the 2010-2019 decade—under current law. That outcome would require the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to sunset as scheduled in 2011 and Congress to stop “patching” the alternative minimum tax to minimize its bite. If neither of those things happens, CBO says the cumulative deficit over the decade would jump to $11.1 trillion, more than doubling the national debt. Our economy cannot sustain that rate of debt increase. How can we reverse it? This paper poses a simple question: could incremental reforms of the current tax system raise enough revenue to reduce the deficit to an average of 2 percent of GDP over the last five years of the budget window? We use the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Tax Model to simulate several revenue-raising tax changes, including raising all income tax rates proportionally, hiking taxes only for high-income taxpayers, and either limiting or eliminating itemized deductions to broaden the tax base. We conclude that politically feasible tax increases within the current tax structure cannot generate sufficient revenues to bring federal budget deficits under control.