If you can’t believe the Wall Street Journal, who can you trust? It makes an important pointwith this reporting as congressional Republicans push to dramatically cut taxes — ostensibly because high U.S. taxes are an impediment to economic development.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Thursday said the share of economic output taken by governments in developed economies as taxes has risen to its highest level since records began 50 years ago.

But in the U.S., taxes as a share of gross domestic product fell in 2016 to below the level recorded in 2007, the year before the financial crisis hit and briefly reduced tax revenues for governments around the world.

According to the OECD, the U.S. government—at national, state and local levels—raised the equivalent of 26.2% of GDP in taxes last year, placing it 31st out of the research body’s 35 members. Only Turkey, Ireland, Chile and Mexico taxed less.

Gene Sperling, an economic adviser to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, commented on Twitter in sharing this article:

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US has LOWEST tax burden of all G-7 nations. GOP notion that lowering our net tax burden is key to our competitiveness — as opposed to investing more in infrastructure, skills, children and our most hard pressed families — is w/o foundation.

If only facts mattered.

Sperling followed the tax news with this more general commentary on GOP tax plans:

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