During the 1980 presidential campaign, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush decried Ronald Reagan\u2019s supply-side tax cuts as \u201cvoodoo economics\u201d because the policy promised to lower tax rates and generate more production, and thus more tax revenues.\u00a0 Bush\u2019s denunciation of Reagan\u2019s economic vision was a proxy for Keynesian thinkers in both parties, who thought (and think) that tax reductions spur consumption (demand), not production (supply).<\/p>\n
Of course, Bush lost to Reagan in the Republican primary that year, in part because Reagan had a more compelling message: let\u2019s cut taxes to get the economy growing instead of cutting them simply to reduce spending.\u00a0 Moreover, Bush was wrong because Reagan’s policies worked.<\/p>\n
This weekend, 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich slammed Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and the latter\u2019s \u201cPath to Prosperity\u201d budget proposal as \u201cright-wing social engineering<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because Gingrich thinks changing the way Medicare operates \u2013 from straight government subsidy to vouchers \u2013 is too \u201cradical<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n But that isn\u2019t stopping Gingrich from continuing to support an individual mandate<\/a> to buy health insurance.\u00a0 (Like fellow contender Mitt Romney (R-MA), but unlike President Barack Obama, Gingrich wants the individual mandate at the state, not federal, level.)\u00a0 So, in Gingrich\u2019s mind, transforming Medicare from a defined benefit into a defined voucher is \u201cradical,\u201d but mandating individuals to buy health insurance is not?<\/p>\n When Reagan adopted the mantra of economic growth through across-the-board tax cuts in 1980, he gave voters a clear alternative to the shared scarcity narrative being peddled by politicians in both parties.\u00a0 Ryan\u2019s budget proposal is based on Reagan\u2019s insight that less taxes and more growth sells; less choice and more government mandates do not.<\/p>\n Like Reagan, whoever wins the Republican presidential nomination next year will have to make some accommodation with Ryan\u2019s economic vision.\u00a0 Downsizing – whether it’s freedom, opportunity, taxes, or spending – isn’t enough of a message to create the kind of majority needed to enact the kind of policy changes that spur real private sector growth.\u00a0 With positions supporting ethanol subsidies<\/a> and state level individual mandates, it sounds like Newt Gingrich is more comfortable playing the elder Bush’s role in this campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" During the 1980 presidential campaign, Republican candidate George H. W. Bush decried Ronald Reagan\u2019s supply-side tax cuts as \u201cvoodoo economics\u201d because the policy promised to lower tax rates and generate more production, and thus more tax revenues.\u00a0 Bush\u2019s denunciation of Reagan\u2019s economic vision was a proxy for Keynesian thinkers in both parties, who thought (and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[914,70,2585,2248,445,311,869,2609,802,456,2249],"class_list":["post-9700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2012-presidential-election","tag-budget","tag-economic-growth","tag-ethanol","tag-george-h-w-bush","tag-individual-mandate","tag-newt-gingrich","tag-path-to-prosperity","tag-paul-ryan","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-subsidy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9700"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9716,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9700\/revisions\/9716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}