Wall Street Journal editorial, Revenues Are Rising: Individual Receipts Are Up 23% in Three Months:

[T]here’s some good budget news to report for a change. Federal tax revenues are rising briskly again, which should allow progress against deficits if the politicians can control their spending appetites.

The CBO reported last week that federal tax receipts climbed in December by $18 billion, following somewhat smaller gains in the previous two months. For the first quarter of fiscal 2011, revenues have climbed by $44 billion, or nearly 9%, to $531 billion. Especially encouraging is that these revenue gains came predominantly from individual income taxes, which rose 23% in the first three months to $256 billion. … We should add that the deficit declined only modestly in the first fiscal quarter because spending rose by $26 billion to $902 billion.