A Gamblers Guide

A Reader’s Question – So, conservatives, how’s ‘starving the beast’ working for you?

It’s Q&A time again. This one comes from ‘jrrose’ who is asking…

In a move that GOP Majority Leader Howard Baker called a “riverboat gamble,” Reagan sold the country on an “across-the-board” tax cut that brought the top rate down to 50 percent. According to supply-side economists, the wealthy would use their tax break to spur investment, and the economy would boom. And if it didn’t well, to Reagan’s cadre of small-government conservatives, the resulting red ink could be a win-win. “We started talking about just cutting taxes and saying, ‘Screw the deficit,’” Bartlett recalls. “We had this idea that if you lowered revenues, the concern about the deficit would be channeled into spending cuts.”It was the birth of what is now known as “Starve the Beast” a conscious strategy by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by bankrupting the country. As conceived by the right-wing intellectual Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan called for Republicans to create a “fiscal problem” by slashing taxes and then foist the pain of reimposing fiscal discipline onto future Democratic administrations who, in Kristol’s words, would be forced to “tidy up afterward.”There was only one problem: The Reagan tax cuts spiked the federal deficit to a dangerous level, even as the country remained mired in a deep recession.Just like we are still in now.So, cons, what’s your excuse on implementing this and how’s it working out for you?

Answer: “Starve the beast” was an utter failure – the belief that decreasing revenue for the Federal Government through tax cuts would then force the government to spend less. Did that happen? No. The government under Reagan only spent more, particularly military spending. while revenues decreased.

Tagged:Politics