Think taxes are too high?

Think again. From Ezra Klein's blog (my emphasis):

In 2011, federal spending was 24.1 percent of GDP. Tax revenue was 15.4 percent of GDP. That’s a slight rise from 2009 and 2010, when revenue was 14.9 percent of GDP, but all three are near-record lows: Before this financial crisis, the last time federal revenues were below 16 percent was 1950 — which is to say, before Medicare and Medicaid were law, and before Hawaii was even a state. For comparison’s sake, federal revenues averaged 18.2 percent of GDP in the Reagan years, and 19 percent of GDP in the Clinton years.

There are two reasons revenues are so low. One is that the Bush tax cuts — which Obama extended in 2010 — pushed them far below where they would have been if we had stuck to Clinton’s rates. The other is that recessions bring revenue down and spending up, and we’re just coming out of a deep, long recession.