As the recession grinds on, a chorus on the right is reviving their call for a new round of tax cuts as a solution to mounting job losses. But tax cuts, as the Economic Policy Institute and many other prominent economists have repeatedly demonstrated, have been very ineffective in our very recent past.

Two recent examples make the case: Experts estimate that less than half of the 2008 tax cuts were actually turned into jobs-generating expenditures, and the Bush tax cuts of 2003 – the misnamed “Jobs and Growth Plan” – missed the administration’s announced target by some 3.1 million jobs.

Details of those recent tax-cut failures and of the better options before us are reviewed here by EPI’s president, Lawrence Mishel.