Show our back-and-forth to any conservative economist you can think of and then get back to me. If you don’t know any, try Walter Williams, who is a friend of mine, as is Steve Moore, and Tom Sowell. I will contribute $500 to Free Republic if any of the three disagree with me.
Why? You want even more people to read your dishonesty and promotion of wild government spending increases?
FURTHER QUOTATIONS FROM BARTLETT: Yesterday, we hailed Matt Yglesias; Matt had slammed the press corps’ refusal to challenge Saint Rudy’s claim about lower tax rates (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/5/07). And just like that, up jumped Bruce Bartlett, with an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times! Bartlett, a ranking conservative economist, writes “[a]s one who was present at the creation of ‘supply-side economics’ back in the 1970s.” Lickety-split, Bartlett echoed some of the points that Yglesias made:BARTLETT (4/6/07): The original supply-siders suggested that some tax cuts, under very special circumstances, might actually raise federal revenues...Higher revenues from lower taxes? As Yglesias noted, Giuliani himself made this sort of “implausible” claim in accepting Forbes’ endorsement last week—and the mainstream “press corps” said nothing about it. As he continues, Bartlett explains what the original “supply-siders” actually thought about their first famous tax cuts. No, they didn’t think their cuts would produce extra revenue. Repeat slowly: They didn’t think that:
But today it is common to hear tax cutters claim, implausibly, that all tax cuts raise revenue. Last year, President Bush said, ''You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase.'' Senator John McCain told National Review magazine last month that ''tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues.'' Last week, Steve Forbes endorsed Rudolph Giuliani for the White House, saying, ''He's seen the results of supply-side economics firsthand—higher revenues from lower taxes.”BARTLETT: As the staff economist for Representative Jack Kemp, a Republican of New York, I helped devise the tax plan he co-sponsored with Senator William Roth, a Delaware Republican. Kemp-Roth was intended to bring down the top statutory federal income tax rate to 50 percent from 70 percent and the bottom rate to 10 percent from 14 percent...Duh. “Furthermore,” Bartlett writes, “our belief that we might get back a third of the revenue loss was always a long-run proposition. Even the most rabid supply-sider knew we would lose $1 of revenue for $1 of tax cut in the short term, because it took time for incentives to work and for people to change their behavior.”
We believed that our tax plan would stimulate the economy to such a degree that the federal government would not lose $1 of revenue for every $1 of tax cut. Studies of the 1964 tax cut showed that about a third of it was recouped, and we expected similar results. Thus, contrary to common belief, neither Jack Kemp nor William Roth nor Ronald Reagan ever said that there would be no revenue loss associated with an across-the-board cut in tax rates. We just thought it wouldn't lose as much revenue as predicted by the standard revenue forecasting models, which were based on Keynesian principles.So there you have it, again, from Bartlett, whose clarity we’ve praised in the past (for example, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/5/02). Duh! As a general matter, tax cuts do not increase federal revenues; that sort of thing could only happen “under very special circumstances.” Bartlett has explained these points many times, but the Giulianis feel free to keep spouting nonsensical nostrums—knowing that our “mainstream” “press corps” will politely stare into air when they do. And of course, Sean Hannity will keep repeating the “implausible” claims which Bartlett derides in this morning’s column. His listeners will have little way to know that they’re being misled—played for fools.