Tax cuts necessarily require eventual reductions in government spending and thus the power of government, agreed?
If they’re sustained long enough, yeah. But a state has more extensive borrowing powers than an individual does, and an administration so inclined can use those powers to spend beyond its means for rather a long time—certainly longer than the term in office of a politician who came to power on a promise of tax cuts. The US federal budget has been growing for a long time, including over the 2001-2009 period, and the growth under low-tax regimes has been paid for by deficit spending.
(Though you’d really want to be looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP. There seems to be somedisagreement over the secular trend there, but the sources I’ve found agree that the trend 2001-2009 was positive.)
Yes, I was going to comment on how a clever politician could spend during their own term to intentionally screw over the next party to take power, but I wanted to avoid the possible political argument that could ensue.
If they’re sustained long enough, yeah. But a state has more extensive borrowing powers than an individual does, and an administration so inclined can use those powers to spend beyond its means for rather a long time—certainly longer than the term in office of a politician who came to power on a promise of tax cuts. The US federal budget has been growing for a long time, including over the 2001-2009 period, and the growth under low-tax regimes has been paid for by deficit spending.
(Though you’d really want to be looking at federal spending as a percentage of GDP. There seems to be some disagreement over the secular trend there, but the sources I’ve found agree that the trend 2001-2009 was positive.)
Yes, I was going to comment on how a clever politician could spend during their own term to intentionally screw over the next party to take power, but I wanted to avoid the possible political argument that could ensue.
Yeah, the “starve the beast” strategy looked appealing in theory but rather spectacularly failed in practice...