Reaganomics is on the ropes
Kansas and Wisconsin sound the death knell for supply side economics
Ronald Reagan came to office promoting prosperity by cutting taxes and getting government off the back of business. A one-time New Deal Democrat, Reagan argued that government was the enemy. Where the establishment prior to Reagan had hoped to use government as a force to achieve their goals, Reagan argued that government itself was the problem. As he stated, “the most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
We now look back on Reagan, how he worked with Democrats and pushed through a tax increase, as a relative moderate to today’s Republicans. But at the time, he was a revolutionary. I remember looking at the budgets over time for one government program after another. They had seen steady increases over the years…until Reagan came into office. Then, the budgets simply fell off the cliffs.
Later on, Tip O’Neil, Democratic Speaker of the House at the time, said that his greatest regret was not fighting Reagan’s cuts to social programs. But he believed that people would be so outraged by the cuts that they would turn against Reagan. He could not have been more wrong.
The tragedy is that government was well on its way to achieving many of the goals we…
