You Don't Reduce Debt with New Taxes

Andrew Biggs, Kevin Hassett and Matt Jensen researched 21 countries over the past 37 years who tried to reduce government debt. The data clearly indicate that successful attempts to balance budgets rely almost entirely on reduced government expenditures, while unsuccessful ones rely heavily on tax increases. On average, the typical unsuccessful consolidation consisted of 53% tax increases and 47% spending cuts.
By contrast, the typical successful fiscal consolidation consisted, on average, of 85% spending cuts. While tax increases play little role in successful efforts to balance budgets, there are some cases where governments reduced spending by more than was needed to lower the budget deficit, and then went on to cut taxes. Finland’s consolidation in the late 1990s consisted of 108% spending cuts, accompanied by modest tax cuts.

http://www.aei.org/article/102945