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Thursday, September 06, 2007
The Ubiquity of the Free-Lunch Supply-Siders
Prompted by right-leaning Atlantic Monthly blogger Megan McArdle's criticism of Jon Chait's The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics, left blogistan has fired off a volley of posts refuting McArdle's assertion that free-lunch supply siders are an obscure, rare breed.
McArdle:
I'm diving into Jonathan Chait's piece in The New Republic on how a whole huge conspiracy of crazy supply-siders has taken over the Republican party. This is, to put it kindly, wildly overblown. I mean, I'm all for someone taking on the sillier kind of supply siders who fanny about claiming that tax cuts increase tax revenue, but they've been rather thin on the ground lately. Most tax cutters today want tax cuts because they think they are good for the economy, not because they think that it will increase tax revenue.
Kevin Drum:
The problem, as Chait says, is that virtually no one in the Republican Party does believe [a 5% tax won't cripple the economy]. George Bush doesn't believe it. Dick Cheney doesn't believe it. Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and Tom DeLay didn't believe it. And judging by the astonishing pander-fest that takes place whenever taxes are mentioned in one of the Republican debates, not a single one of the Republican presidential candidate believes it.
And then there's the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which routinely suggests the nation will collapse if taxes are raised. There's the Club for Growth, ditto, plus Rush Limbaugh and his clone army. And there's Grover Norquist's tax pledge, signed by virtually every single GOP member of the House and Senate.
Matthew Yglesias:
Meanwhile, the reason people like Jon and I and other liberals spend so much time pointing out that this claim is false is precisely the same as the reason conservatives spend so much time defending it: it's an extremely potent political claim.
There's a systematic effort by the right to convince people that tax cuts are not merely beneficial in some ways or beneficial all things considered but that there are actually no tradeoffs whatsoever. Getting that idea taken seriously in the press is very powerful politically, so those of us who don't approve of the tax cutting policy agenda are very upset about the ability of conservatives to get away with making it, over and over and over again.
Also, go check out Brendan Nyhan's compilation of President Bush and VP Cheney quotes on how tax cuts pay for themselves.
Posted by Craig Jennings
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