Starve the Beast The Real Bush Agenda
Nov. 10th, 2003 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarkymanThe alternative to "tax-and-spend" seems to be "no-tax-but-spend- anyway," with the ultimate goal being to bankrupt our government so that all it can do is defend our borders and pay perpetual interest to its creditors. I am heartened by the fact that my Republican co-workers are actually angry about being duped in this way. Less encouraging is the fact that they all still intend to vote for Bush in '04. -- Jamie McCarthy
Starve the Beast
http://www.wordspy.com/words/starvethebeast.asp
v. To cut taxes with the intent of using the reduced revenue as an excuse to drastically reduce the size and number of services offered by a government.
—starve-the-beast n., adj.
—starving the beast n., pp.
—starve-the-beaster n.
Example Citation:
The starve-the-beast doctrine is now firmly within the conservative mainstream. George W. Bush himself seemed to endorse the doctrine as the budget surplus evaporated: in August 2001 he called the disappearing surplus "incredibly positive news" because it would put Congress in a "fiscal straitjacket."
Like supply-siders, starve-the-beasters favor tax cuts mainly for people with high incomes. That is partly because, like supply-siders, they emphasize the incentive effects of cutting the top marginal rate; they just don't believe that those incentive effects are big enough that tax cuts pay for themselves. But they have another reason for cutting taxes mainly on the rich, which has become known as the "lucky ducky" argument.
Here's how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these "lucky duckies." (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their "blood boiling with tax rage."
—Paul Krugman, "The Tax-Cut Con," The New York Times, September 14, 2003
Example Citation #2:
But the only way to force government to pare itself down is to cut off the flow of money going to it. Politicians won't stop spending other peoples' money on their own. They'll keep doing it because ... well, that's what politicians do.
That means if we want smaller, less-intrusive government, we have to "starve the beast." Cutting their allowance is the only way to put politicians on a spending leash. And that means tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. The recent Bush/Republican rebate was just a small down-payment. Time to break out the meat cleaver.
—Chuck Muth, "Commentary: More tax cuts please," United Press International, August 17, 2001
Earliest Citation:
Giant federal tax cuts and deficits have made it politically impossible for Congress to enact major, permanent new programs. Although big new programs stopped springing up several years before Mr. Reagan took office, the president "has changed the whole frame of reference within which the budget is debated," says Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington.
But the deficit "starved" few programs to death, even in cases — such as the Small Business Administration and the Economic Development Administration — where many liberals questioned the programs' worth. And the deficit has sharply added to one spending category: Interest on the national debt has risen to about $140 billion in the current fiscal year from $69 billion in fiscal 1981.
"We didn't starve the beast," laments a White House official. "It's still eating quite well — by feeding off future generations."
—Paul Blustein, "Reagan's Record," The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 1985
Starve the Beast
http://www.wordspy.com/words/starvethebeast.asp
v. To cut taxes with the intent of using the reduced revenue as an excuse to drastically reduce the size and number of services offered by a government.
—starve-the-beast n., adj.
—starving the beast n., pp.
—starve-the-beaster n.
Example Citation:
The starve-the-beast doctrine is now firmly within the conservative mainstream. George W. Bush himself seemed to endorse the doctrine as the budget surplus evaporated: in August 2001 he called the disappearing surplus "incredibly positive news" because it would put Congress in a "fiscal straitjacket."
Like supply-siders, starve-the-beasters favor tax cuts mainly for people with high incomes. That is partly because, like supply-siders, they emphasize the incentive effects of cutting the top marginal rate; they just don't believe that those incentive effects are big enough that tax cuts pay for themselves. But they have another reason for cutting taxes mainly on the rich, which has become known as the "lucky ducky" argument.
Here's how the argument runs: to starve the beast, you must not only deny funds to the government; you must make voters hate the government. There's a danger that working-class families might see government as their friend: because their incomes are low, they don't pay much in taxes, while they benefit from public spending. So in starving the beast, you must take care not to cut taxes on these "lucky duckies." (Yes, that's what The Wall Street Journal called them in a famous editorial.) In fact, if possible, you must raise taxes on working-class Americans in order, as The Journal said, to get their "blood boiling with tax rage."
—Paul Krugman, "The Tax-Cut Con," The New York Times, September 14, 2003
Example Citation #2:
But the only way to force government to pare itself down is to cut off the flow of money going to it. Politicians won't stop spending other peoples' money on their own. They'll keep doing it because ... well, that's what politicians do.
That means if we want smaller, less-intrusive government, we have to "starve the beast." Cutting their allowance is the only way to put politicians on a spending leash. And that means tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. The recent Bush/Republican rebate was just a small down-payment. Time to break out the meat cleaver.
—Chuck Muth, "Commentary: More tax cuts please," United Press International, August 17, 2001
Earliest Citation:
Giant federal tax cuts and deficits have made it politically impossible for Congress to enact major, permanent new programs. Although big new programs stopped springing up several years before Mr. Reagan took office, the president "has changed the whole frame of reference within which the budget is debated," says Republican Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington.
But the deficit "starved" few programs to death, even in cases — such as the Small Business Administration and the Economic Development Administration — where many liberals questioned the programs' worth. And the deficit has sharply added to one spending category: Interest on the national debt has risen to about $140 billion in the current fiscal year from $69 billion in fiscal 1981.
"We didn't starve the beast," laments a White House official. "It's still eating quite well — by feeding off future generations."
—Paul Blustein, "Reagan's Record," The Wall Street Journal, October 21, 1985
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Date: 2003-11-10 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2003-11-10 08:08 pm (UTC)Essentially -- and I'm taking a good bit of this from David Brock, the "turncoat twinkie" who ratted out the neocon insider revolution in his almost perfect Blinded by the Right (perfect but for lack of an index!) but also from other sources -- Cold War veterans joined forces with powerful and craven businessmen and rode the post-70's backlash against liberal extremism all the way to Washington. In fact, many of the most fervent neocons -- as Brock was -- started out with very liberal ideas, which became distorted by revulsion at the more extreme liberal views. (Many liberals, taking a poor lesson from earlier conservative oppression during the 50's and 60's, did exactly the same awful things, only reversed, inadvertently sinking the second-wave liberal revolution practically before it had even gotten started.) This explains the dramatic libertarian bent of many neocons. They don't just hate Democrats, they hate everyone in power, even themselves at times. They don't love Republicans, they just hate them less.