About Starving Beasts And Other Mythical Creatures
Victor commented on one of Andrew's posts that he still believes in the Starve the Beast theory of budgeting. That precipitated a good discussion that I wan't to join, albeit just briefly.
Starve the Beast supposedly was a major strategy of the Reagan administration. The theory was that if it cut taxes and increased the deficit, it would will also increase the pressure on Congress to reduce spending to get the deficit back down.
There is one big flaw in this thinking: no one cares about the deficit these days. The Bush administration has been telling anyone who will listen that, in the immortal words of former Treasury Secretary John Snow, the deficit is "manageable." The administration has also been going to great pains to make it clear that the deficit is below the average as a percent of GDP so reductions aren't necessary. And it has been the biggest spending administration since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s.
That means that the White House has been trying to get everyone to ignore rather than starve the beast.
In addition, there seems to be growing sentiment among Democrats that, if they caputure the presidency in 2008 and retain control of Congress, they won't feel obligated to cut spending to compensate for the Bush-created deficits.
That makes Starve the Beast a nice theory whose time has passed, if it really ever existed.
Starving the Beast Is Impossible
I'm trying to recall a single year in the past 40 years where federal budgetary restrictions were enough to eliminate or significantly reduce unneeded government programs, departments, divisions, councils, etc. I'm coming up with zilch. If we have a total economic meltdown, widespread unemployment, halving of tax revenues, etc., the federal government will borrow or print enough money to keep its bloated bureaucracy afloat.