Lessons from Reaganomics for the 21st Century, Part V

Based on a study I authored for the Club for Growth Foundation, I’ve dedicated this week to a series about Reaganomics.

• Part I was about Reagan’s track record on spending and lessons for today.
• Part II was about Reagan’s track record on taxes and lessons for today.
• Part III was about Reagan’s track record on red tape and lessons for today.
• Part IV was about Reagan’s track record on inflation and lessons for today.

The main takeaway from those columns is that Reagan’s policies were very successful.

Which probably helps to explain why polling data shows that Reagan is still very popular with voters (you can see my favorite poll result here).

In a bizarre twist, however, there are some Republicans who think Reagan’s free-market principles are outdated.

These people call themselves national conservatives, though I think of them as reincarnated Rockefeller Republicans (what else would you call people who favor awful policies such as industrial policy and tax increases?).

Today’s column explains why they are wrong.

…many of Reagan’s reforms have been eroded over the past 30-plus years, and the United States is once again facing major economic challenges. Is it time for Reaganomics 2.0? Some argue that America faces different problems that require different solutions. They assert that pushing for the same policies is “Zombie Reaganism.” Many of those critics are avowed leftists, so their antipathy is not surprising. But there are also some self-described conservatives who use the same term to express hostility. …To assess the merits of modern-day small-government conservatism, this paper will briefly explain the problems Reagan faced and the solutions he pursued, followed by an examination of today’s problems and the degree to which similar policies could and should apply. In short, America faces remarkably similar challenges to those that confronted President Reagan. …Policymakers who wish to boost middle-class incomes would be wise to emulate President Reagan.

For what it’s worth, I think some of the national conservatives are not statists. Instead, they merely think they should reject Reaganism for non-economic reasons.

So I included a section about being in favor of limited government regardless of views on other topics.

They assume support for Reagan-style small government conservatism:

• implies support for other policies adopted during the Reagan years, such as immigration amnesty.
• comes at the expense of conservative social policy.
• means no concern for the value of a defense industrial base.
• means being in favor of a “neoconservative” nation-building agenda.
• is somehow inconsistent with communitarian values.

This paper does not address those issues, other than to state that the desirability of Reagan’s four-pillar agenda does not depend on those other topics.

The bottom line is that everyone should be united by a desire for greater prosperity. And that explicitly implies being in favor of free markets and limited government.

P.S. The only hyphenated conservatism I like is small-government conservatism. In previous columns, I’ve pointed out the shortcomings of compassionate conservatism, kinder-and-gentler conservatism, common-good capitalism, and reform conservatism.

P.P.S. At the risk of understatement, Reagan was a not a small-government conservative in his younger days. Like a fine wine, however, he improved with age, migrating to the top-right of my Venn diagram.

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The Bizarre Rebirth of Rockefeller Republicans

I first became interested in public policy in the 1970s because of Ronald Reagan and his uplifting message about unleashing America’s economy by getting government out of the way.

There were plenty of establishment types inside the Republican Party, however, who did not want Reagan.

But that was not unexpected. It was part of a decades-long battle for the soul of the GOP. One that still continues today.

• Dewey vs. Taft
• Rockefeller vs. Goldwater
• Ford/Bush vs. Reagan
• Establishment vs Tea Party

That battle is more complicated today. Instead of big-government Republicans vs small-government Republicans, we now have to add Trump-style populists to the equation.

Unfortunately (at least for those of us with libertarian sympathies), this third group is somewhat similar to big-government Republicans with regards to economic policy.

That being said, Trump-style Republicans and establishment Republicans clearly are not allies, even though they both are okay with bigger government.

And that’s why I created a Venn Diagram to show how these three groups interact.

To expand on this concept, let’s look at an article Matthew Continetti wrote for Commentary about the rejuvenation of a big-government wing in the GOP.

Republicans haven’t issued a platform since 2016, and it shows. What the party stands for is no longer central to its identity. …the Republican Party’s newest “New Right”…believe that the GOP ought to be remade in Trump’s image. …the New Right…wants radically to revise the Right’s positions on…free markets… Most New Right writers…share one quality: They sound more like left-wing progressives than actual conservatives. …New Right thinkers affiliated with the journal American Affairs and the think tank American Compass…are part of an effort to move the GOP toward greater state intervention in the economy. Readers of American Affairs will find paeans to the Chinese authoritarian model, discussions of industrial policy, and jeremiads against Wall Street. …Sohrab Ahmari is a leading indicator of the New Right’s ultimate destination. …the New Deal is without fault, and the liberal economics writer and Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith is a forgotten genius. …It’s up to the rest of us to expose the New Right for what it truly is: …like its progressive twin, corrosive of the American tradition of liberty.

The author doesn’t even mention the opposition to genuine entitlement reform, which from my perspective arguably is the biggest flaw in Trumpie-type thinking.

I don’t know whether to characterize that as head-in-the-sand thinking or kick-the-can-down-the-road thinking, but it’s a recipe for giant future tax increases.

All of which is why I keep telling my conservative and Republican friends (at least the fiscally sensible ones) that they don’t have to choose between big-government Trumpism and big-government establishment Republicanism.

They can rally behind Reaganism. Or, for those who prefer an updated term, freedom conservatism.

P.S. I was right about Trump even before he became president.

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The Failure of Big-Government Tories Should Be a Warning to Big-Government Republicans

I’ve been very critical of big-spending Republicans like Trump for two reasons.

• First, bigger government saps economic vitality by diverting resources from the economy’s productive sector.
• Second, bigger government sooner or later will lead to massive tax increases such as a value-added tax.

I’ve also been critical of big spending Tories in the United Kingdom.

Just as today’s Republicans have forgotten the lessons of Ronald Reagan, the U.K.’s Conservative Party has forgotten the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.

To be more specific, the Tories have allowed spending to increase, particularly during the pandemic.

But rather than undo that mistake, they have opted for big tax increases.

This is a path that is bad policy…and bad politics.

On that topic, Joseph Sternberg of the Wall Street Journal opined last week about the feckless incompetence of the British Conservative Party.

The Tories made a deal with the devil when they won power in 2010. Today they’re paying up. The deal concerned spending. Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne rode into office in 2010 on the back of a global financial panic that had become a fiscal crisis for the U.K. Government spending had ballooned to just above 46% of gross domestic product in the 2009-10 fiscal year, a level not seen since the mid-1970s… Believe it or not, British voters care about such things and responded well to Tory promises to get a grip on the public purse. But Messrs. Cameron and Osborne weren’t entirely candid… The absolute level of spending in inflation-adjusted terms was roughly 1.4% lower in 2013-14 than it had been when Messrs. Cameron and Osborne took office, but then crept upward to end the decade 3.5% higher than at the start of the Tories’ term. …a dollop of ultracheap money thanks to low interest rates…allowed the Tories to redistribute public spending toward entitlements. Social transfers to the elderly grew as a proportion of total spending to 14.5% from 13.8% between 2009-10 and 2019-20, and health spending grew to 18.5% from 16.2% as the Conservatives shoveled money into the NHS. …This shift has made the Tories the indentured servants of the welfare state. …If they lose the next election, a big part of the reason will be their twin failures to make realistic entitlement pledges and to prevent entitlements from devouring the cash necessary to fulfill their other promises. …When Mr. Trump inveighs against Social Security and Medicare reform, he threatens to ensnare the Republican Party in the same form of fiscal servitude in which British Tories are trapped.

For American readers, the last sentence of the above excerpt is key.

The Trump position on entitlements of kicking the can down the road is a recipe for massive future tax increases.

For British readers, the fecklessness of Tories is producing policies that are definitely bad for the U.K. economy (but almost certainly will be good for the Labour Party when the next election occurs).

The moral of the story is that good policy is not easy, but it beats the alternative.

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The Optimistic Case for Spending Restraint, Part II

Earlier this year, speaking at the Acton Institute in Michigan, I presented an optimistic case for spending restraint.

My premise was very simple, summarized in four sentences.

1. Spending restraint is desperately needed.
2. Spending restraint is impossible without entitlement reform.
3. Republicans used to be good on entitlement reform.
4. Republicans can be good once again on the issue.

My left-leaning friends disagree about the first point, as you might expect.

My right-leaning friends, meanwhile, are skeptical about the fourth point. And I understand why since Republicans have a less-than-impressive track record on fiscal policy. Heck, they are often even worse than Democrats.

But as I explained at the Acton Institute, Republicans occasionally decide to push for good policy.

• Under Reagan.
• In the 1990s.
• The Tea Party.

For what it’s worth, I think we may be on the verge of another one of these moments. Let’s look at the Senate, where Rand Paul has a budget plan based on spending restraint.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Washington Examiner.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has presented an alternative plan to the recent Fiscal Responsibility Act introduced by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Paul’s proposal comes as the agreement from McCarthy and Biden has drawn discontent among some Republican lawmakers, who are refusing to vote for the deal. Under Paul’s plan, the debt ceiling would be given a $500 billion increase to encourage Congress to take action on the nation’s debt sooner. Paul’s proposal also includes caps on both the sums of discretionary and mandatory spending, which would cut 5% spent every year.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that only 21 Senators voted for Paul’s proposal.

Nonetheless, that’s a base of support for sensible policy.

Now consider this story from the Hill about a budget plan by some House Republicans.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest conservative caucus in the House, …would balance the federal budget in seven years, …while also cutting spending by $16.3 trillion and taxes by $5 trillion over a decade. …It does not include any age increases for Medicare eligibility, but does include some “modest adjustments to the retirement age.” …Leaders of the caucus stressed that the proposed entitlement reforms will require bipartisan cooperation, since Social Security is set to be insolvent in 2033 and Medicare is set to be insolvent in 2031.

Does this mean every House Republican is ready to support needed spending reforms? Or that any Democrats will join them to do the right thing?

Of course not.

But, as is the case in the Senate, there is a base of support for good policy.

The bottom line is that there is zero chance of good budget policy happening while Biden is in the White House. As such, I mostly view Senator Paul’s plan, as well as the RSC plan, as opportunities for fiscally sensible lawmakers to lay the groundwork for future reform.

Which means the real issue is whether the next president prefers spending restraint or massive tax increases. And, if the next president wants to do the right thing, then we will see if the base of support in the House and Senate can be expanded to a majority.

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Swamp-Creature Republicans

I don’t like big-government Democrats, but I’m even more hostile to big-government Republicans.

That’s because the Democrats don’t lie to me. They openly advocate higher taxes and a bigger burden of government spending.

Many Republicans, by contrast, publicly proclaim their support for fiscal restraint, but they push for bigger government when they think voters are not paying attention.

And they do it for despicable reasons. They do what they know is bad solely to get campaign contributions.

Let’s look at a couple of examples of Republicans siding with big government.

Here are some excerpts from a column in Real Clear Policy by Professor Mario Loyola.

Why are anti-establishment Republicans embracing the special interest racket of Washington, D.C.? …in order for government to be able to redistribute wealth among various groups, it has become a free-for-all of rent-seeking special interests whose general preference is for government-created cartels designed to transfer wealth from unsuspecting working families to themselves. …Curiously, however, the very Republicans who tend to most bewail ‘the swamp’ are increasingly prone to embrace the policies that created it in the first place. …the spectacle of supposedly anti-swamp Republicans shilling for every special interest racket with lobbyists in Washington. …The sugar program’s throttling of production is…effective in transferring wealth from consumers to sugar producers… The ethanol program has led to an area the size of the state of Michigan being devoted to the production of corn ethanol instead of food, producing a fuel that is terrible for cars and for the environment and raises the cost of both food and gasoline.

Not all Republicans are in favor of these bad policies.

But sugar subsidies and the ethanol scam rank as some of the worst handouts in the entire budget.

So it’s disgusting when even one Republican sides with special interests over taxpayers and consumers.

The Export-Import Bank is another example of an indefensible handout.

For purposes of today’s column, the key takeaway is that I want Republicans to be small-government Reaganites, not establishment big spenders like Bush or populist big spenders like Trump.

P.S. A few years ago, Playboy put together an amusing comparison of Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians.

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The Most Laughable Tweet of 2022

I’ve shared some notable tweets this year.

• Most enjoyable
• Most savage
• Most succinct
• Most clueless
• Most informative

Today, we’re going to expand on this list with the “most laughable” tweet of 2022. But this tweet from the Republican National Committee is a case of accidental humor rather than deliberate humor.

As you might expect, the RNC did not bother trying to prove its statement.

That’s because the Republican party generally does a terrible job. Donald Trump expanded government. George W. Bush expanded government. And George H.W. Bush expanded government.

You have to go all the way back to Ronald Reagan to find a Republican who actually was on the side of taxpayers (and before him, you have to go all the way back to Coolidge).

Indeed, Republicans usually wind up expanding government faster than Democrats.

And that’s not because of the defense budget. Even when looking at just domestic spending, Republicans (other than Reagan) have a worse track record.

I have to wonder whether the folks at the RNC were doing hallucinogenic drugs when they sent out that tweet? Or was it a naive intern who heard a few speeches and was tricked into thinking the GOP actually cared about shrinking government.

The latter possibility is a good excuse to share this cartoon.

But let’s also look at some serious analysis.

Here are some excerpts from a column in the Wall Street Journal by Kimberley Strassel. She was motivated by a pork-filled handout to the tech industry this past summer, but then proceeded to list many other sins.

The GOP that is assisting in this quarter-trillion-dollar spendathon is the same GOP that last year provided the votes for a $1 trillion infrastructure boondoggle. The same GOP that in 2020 signed on to not one, not two, three or four, but five Covid “relief” bills, to the tune of some $3.5 trillion. The same GOP that…blew through discretionary spending caps. The same GOP that has unofficially re-embraced earmarks. The party occasionally takes a breather—say to gripe about the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Covid bill in 2021—but then it’s right back to the spending grindstone. When was the last time anyone heard a Republican talk about the need to reform Social Security or Medicare? That disappeared with the election of Donald Trump (opposed to both)… Instead, a growing faction of the party sees a future in buying the votes of working- and middle-class voters with costly new entitlement proposals of their own, such as expanded child tax credits.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

But since laughing is more fun, here’s a cartoon about earmarks (which recently were endorsed by Republican lawmakers).

I’ll close with a tiny bit of optimism.

I’ve dealt with hundreds of politicians over the years, most of whom were Republicans.

By and large, they usually understand that big government is bad for prosperity. But there are two things that have an impact on their voting behavior.

1. They are afraid of being rejected by voters who want freebies (especially the ones they already are receiving).
2. But they might be willing to cast courageous votes if there is a real chance of a long-run change in policy.

To elaborate on the second point, there have been three periods of spending restraint in my lifetime: 1) the Reagan years, 2) the Clinton years, and 3) the Tea Party years.

In all three cases, there was a critical mass of lawmakers who were willing to do the right thing in spite of the usual incentives in Washington to do the wrong thing.

Is there a 4th period in our future? That depends on whether the GOP returns to Reaganism.

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Republican Warfare, Part IV: Will the GOP Get Serious about Spending?

Last week, I explained that “supply siders” need to be ardent advocates of spending restraint. After all, there is no chance of good tax policy in the future if the burden of federal spending continues to expand.

I also wrote about “national conservatives” and pointed out that their opposition to entitlement reform means they implicitly embrace massive tax increases.

The bottom line is that the United States has a built-in spending crisis. Democrats are not serious about addressing the problem. So if Republicans bail as well, the nation is doomed to become a decrepit, European-style welfare state.

What does that mean? Nothing good, at least for people in the productive sector of the economy.

• Lower living standards and less growth
• Big tax burdens on lower-income people

In an article for National Review, Philip Klein speculates whether there is any appetite for spending restraint, even among self-described conservatives.

For much of the history of the American conservative movement, limiting the size and scope of government has stood as one of its central goals. …In 2022, such messages were barely anywhere to be found on the campaign trail…conservatives have largely moved on from making the case for reducing the size and power of Washington. In some cases, this shift has been passive. …It has become popular in some circles on the right to mock “zombie Reaganism” and insist that while it may have made sense back in the 1980s to argue for smaller government, such a message is now outdated. …the argument that the battle to limit government has already been lost also neglects to recognize that things could always get worse. That is, even though the federal government has gone through extraordinary growth since the New Deal, it would have grown even larger had there been no conservative movement to push back. One need only look at Europe, where conservative parties long ago made their peace with the welfare state, to see how government agencies have crowded out civil society… There is no way in which a nation with…a ballooning welfare state will be an accommodating place for conservatives in the long run, no matter how much some may fantasize about seizing the dragon and precisely aiming its fire at their enemies during the relatively brief windows in which Republicans have power. Conservatives…should not abandon the fight for limited government.

At the risk of understatement, I fully agree.

I wrote two days ago and also the previous week to make the case for spending restraint.

Those are easy columns to write since it is the same argument I’ve been making my entire life. But what is depressing now is that there is opposition from Republicans as well as Democrats.

Maybe they should all be forced to watch my video series on the economics of government spending.

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Republican Warfare, Part III: National Conservatism and Massive Tax Increases

In yesterday’s column, I explained Republicans are not credible advocates of lower tax rates if they don’t also push for spending restraint.

And, as I explained to the Adam Smith Institute, they will be de facto advocates of higher taxes if they embrace the wrong version of national conservatism.

To understand why I’m concerned, look at the most-recent edition of the Congressional Budget Office’s long-run fiscal forecast.

It shows that the burden of government spending is going to substantially increase over the next three decades – largely due to the unchecked growth of entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.

Failure to control spending will mean two bad things – either huge tax increases or staggering levels of debt. Probably both.

And if politicians add more spending (as Biden has already done), then those long-run trend lines will get even worse.

My concern is that some national conservatives are unwilling to confront this problem and/or they support policies to make matters worse.

But first, in the interest of fairness, bigger government is not an inherent part of the national conservatism platform. At least based on the statement of principles published by The American Conservative.

That document, signed by the key advocates of national conservatism, lists 10 concepts, most of which are good from a libertarian perspective and only one of which is overtly troubling.

1. National independence (I cheer for anyone opposed to global governance)
2. Rejection of imperialism and globalism (they’re opposed to the bad form of globalism)
3. National government (very akin to “state capacity libertarianism“)
4. God and public religion (not a role for government, but they’re not pushing bad ideas)
5. The rule of law (good idea)
6. Free enterprise (they have a few unnecessary caveats)
7. Public research (I’m skeptical of this one)
8. Family and children (not a role for government, but they’re not pushing bad ideas)
9. Immigration (I’m more sympathetic than they are, but agree on the importance of assimilation)
10. Race (they want neutrality rather than preferences)

Unfortunately, some national conservatives go beyond this statement of principles and push for bigger government.

• Such as industrial policy.
• Such as per-child handouts.

But don’t believe me. Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal makes similar points.

Mr. Cass’s movement insists (rightly) that purely economic and material measures are limited. But whenever they move beyond rhetoric to specifics, their preferred solutions almost always turn out to be economic interventions, from child tax credits to industrial policy. …Even a cursory glance at the record of the past half-century shows government often doing the most harm to people precisely when it is trying to help them. Federal efforts to promote homeownership ended up encouraging banks to lend people more than they could afford and feeding a housing bubble. Federal college loans helped drive up tuition while leaving Americans $1.6 trillion in debt. As we ought to have learned from the Great Society, well-intentioned government policies can do immense damage to families and communities. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting the toothpaste back in the tube, government has shown much less success.

The bottom line is that national conservatives always seem to advocate bigger government when they develop or endorse specific policies.

And, to the best of my knowledge, none of them have put forth any agenda to deal with the spending problem that already exists.

That’s an agenda that guarantees future tax increases. And, for what it’s worth, one of the advocates already has embraced a tax-the-rich agenda to help finance the national conservative agenda.

If Republicans go down that path, it won’t end well (just as it didn’t end well when they embraced other fads such as compassionate conservatism, kinder-and-gentler conservatism, common-good capitalism, reform conservatism, etc).

As I’ve previously noted, there no alternative to Reaganism.

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Republican Warfare, Part II: Supply-Side Economics and Government Spending

As part of a recent discussion at the Adam Smith Institute in London, I explained why advocates of sensible taxation in the U.S. and U.K. need to be serious about controlling government spending.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it will be almost impossible to achieve better tax policy if the spending burden continues to increase and we enter an era of endless deficits and debt.

We presumably won’t get needed policy reforms from the Democratic Party (the era of JFK is long gone, and Bill Clinton’s moderate approach also is a distant memory).

But what about Republicans?

In part I of this series, I argued that Trump’s big-government populism was bad politics as well as bad policy.

But I was not arguing for establishment Republicans such as Bush or Romney.

Instead, I think the GOP needs to return to the era of Reagan-style libertarianism.

That means some things that Trumpies want, such as lower tax rates, but it also means genuine spending restraint. Which we didn’t get during the Trump years.

In part II, let’s contemplate whether this is a realistic hope, at least once we get past the Biden years.

If history is any guide, the answer is yes. Here’s another video, from more than 10 years ago, that shows the fiscal discipline the nation enjoyed under both Reagan and Clinton.

If you want more recent evidence, we also had a five-year spending freeze after the so-called Tea Party Republicans took power in 2010.

What about today? Can Republicans sober up and once again become fiscal hawks, morphing into good supply-siders who want better tax policy and spending restraint?

Or are they the bad supply-siders, meaning they spout rhetoric about tax cuts but don’t take the tough steps (such as entitlement reform) that are needed to make lower tax rates realistic?

I’ll close with a very depressing observation. The current fiscal situation is bad, but remember that things will get much worse because of demographic changes such as population aging.

Those who oppose entitlement reform necessarily are embracing huge tax increases and perpetual economic stagnation. Not to mention handing more power to Democrats.

There is no alternative.

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Republican Warfare, Part I: The Trump Problem

I’ve never been a fan of Donald Trump, though my criticism has always focused on his support for bad policies such as wasteful spending, foolish protectionism, and corrupt cronyism.

Today I’m going to change hats and pretend to be a political pundit so I can offer some unsolicited advice to my Republican friends.

If they like to win elections, they need to realize that Donald Trump is bad news.

Yes, he beat a very unpopular Hillary Clinton in 2016, but every subsequent election has produced Republican disappointment.

• The 2018 midterm elections.
• The 2020 presidential election.
• The 2022 midterm elections.

What should most upset the GOP is that Trump has given Democrats control of the Senate twice. First, by depressing Republican turnout in the two Georgia runoff contests with his sore-loser routine about stolen elections in the 2020 cycle. Second, by convincing Republican voters to nominate inferior candidates in the 2022 cycle.

But the fault is not entirely with Trump.

As illustrated by this cartoon, a significant share of Republican voters like Trump and this gives him enormous power over the GOP.

The interesting question to answer is why many rank-and-file Republicans feel so loyal to Trump – even though he often supported bad policies and has helped Democrats gain power in Washington.

I actually answered that question early last year. Here’s some of that column.

One thing that surprised me over the past four yeas is that I found strong support for Trump from grassroots conservative Republicans. Yes, they didn’t like his fiscal profligacy and they mostly didn’t like his protectionism, but they did like the fact that he was a “fighter,” unlike so many (but not all) Republican politicians who get cozy with the DC establishment. They also figured he was worth supporting because he was so reviled by the establishment media (i.e., the enemy of my enemy is my friend).

I think that analysis still applies, but let’s dig deeper. Another problem is that Republican voters think anti-Trump GOP politicians must be bad (closet Democrats, or something like that).

That may be true in some cases, with Mitt Romney being an obvious example.

But that binary analysis – the Trump camp vs the every-other-Republican camp – is woefully inadequate.

I think it’s more accurate (though obviously simplified) to look at the Republican Party as having three camps. And here’s a Venn diagram with my amateur depiction of what unites and divides them.

I’m sure many of you already know my conclusion, which is that the Republican Party should opt for Reaganism.

That’s the approach that reflects good policy and good politics.

I’ve written many times why it is good policy, so I’ll conclude by elaborating on why it is good politics.

Simply stated, Trump voters don’t trust establishment Republicans. They view them as proponents of things they don’t like such as bailouts, globalism, and amnesty.

And establishment Republicans obviously don’t like Trump and Trumpie candidates, even if only for stylistic reasons.

Reaganism, by contrast, can unite all the factions. And when I say Reaganism, I’m not just talking about tax cuts. What we need is the full market-friendly Reagan agenda of spending restraint, deregulation, trade expansion, and sound money.

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Small Government Is Good Policy…and Good Politics

I’m a policy wonk rather than a political pundit.

But since part of my job is educating politicians, I can’t simply rely on arguments about what’s best for the country.

I also have to convince them that they can enact good policy while also keeping their jobs.

And that’s why I developed my Fourth Theorem of Government back in 2017.

The simple message is that ordinary people enjoy more income if and when politicians make wise policy choices.

And that’s a very effective strategy for winning reelection.

The obvious example is Ronald Reagan, who won a landslide in 1984 even though (or, actually, because) he aggressively fought to reduce the burden of federal spending.

But not everybody agrees with me.

In a column for the Washington Post, Henry Olsen argues that the Republican Party needs to ignore libertarian ideas and embrace activist government.

Many conservatives recognize that attracting a new, diverse, working-class voter base also entails a new, non-libertarian approach to economics. …Liberty-minded intellectuals might rail against widespread government involvement in the economy, but voters like free public education, subsidized health care and generous pensions. …voters…prefer the Scylla of tax increases to the Charybdis of entitlement cuts as aging populations put fiscal pressure on health-care and retirement programs. …The Chips package should serve as a symbol of what government will need to do to reinvigorate an economy that builds things.

I’ll make my main points about taxes and entitlements at the end of the column, but I can’t resist some editorializing on two things from the above excerpt.

First, Henry says voters like free public education. Maybe that’s true, but they seem to like the ultra-libertarian idea of school choice even better.

Second, he argues that the recently enacted Chips law is a role model. But if industrial policy was a good idea, why did Japan stagnate? Why has China’s growth slowed?

Let’s now look at more of the column.

Past Republican efforts to limit the growth of entitlement spending after GOP landslides in 1994 and 2010 backfired politically, helping to reelect presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The fact is that 63 percent of Trump voters care more about keeping Social Security benefits than preventing tax hikes, and 45 percent care more about giving seniors on Medicare what they need than about controlling program costs. …Any serious effort to retain these largely working-class voters — and attract more in the future — must come to grips with these views. …Modern conservatism needs to refine Reagan’s insights and explicitly adopt a theory of when government should act to enhance people’s lives.

My first instinct is to ask for examples of how and when government enhances people’s lives. Or to provide examples of where Reagan thought government did a good job.

That certainly does not seems to fit with Reagan’s message in this video, this video, or the second video from this collection.

Or this video!

But maybe Reagan’s own words were insincere. That seems to be what Olsen thinks since he wrote that “the conservative idol implicitly sanctioned government action if it helped people live dignified lives of their own choosing.”

So let’s forget about words and look at the track record.

What we find is that Reagan was remarkably effective in fighting big government. Indeed, what separates Reagan from every other Republican in recent history is that he successfully fought to constrain the burden of government spending.

But don’t believe me. The data from the Historical Tables of the Budget unambiguously show that Reagan was far better than any other president in the past 50-plus years.

I’ll close by questioning Olsen’s claim that voters prefer tax increases over spending restraint.

I very much suspect that is only the case if they think someone else’s taxes are being increased.

If you don’t believe me, I invite you to look at this polling data from left-wing supporters of Bernie Sanders. And if hard-left voters are not willing to pay more to finance European-sized government, what are the odds that Republican voters are willing to pay more?

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Big-Government Republicans Enable Big-Government Democrats

I get asked why I frequently criticize Republicans.

My response is easy. I care about results rather than rhetoric. And while GOP politicians often pay lip service to the principles of limited government, they usually increase spending even faster than Democrats.

Indeed, Republicans are even worse than Democrats when measuring the growth of domestic spending!

This is bad news because it means the burden of government expands when Republicans are in charge.

And, as Gary Abernathy points out in a column for the Washington Post, Republicans then don’t have the moral authority to complain when Democrats engage in spending binges.

President Biden is proposing another $3 trillion in spending… There are objections, but none that can be taken seriously. …Republicans had lost their standing as the party of fiscal responsibility when most of them succumbed to the political virus of covid fever and rubber-stamped around $4 trillion in “covid relief,”… With Trump out and Biden in, Republicans suddenly pretended that their 2020 spending spree happened in some alternate universe. But the GOP’s united opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion package won’t wash off the stench of the hypocrisy. …I noted a year ago that we had crossed the Rubicon, that our longtime flirtation with socialism had become a permanent relationship. Congratulations, Bernie Sanders. The GOP won’t become irrelevant because of its association with Trump, as some predict. It will diminish because it is bizarrely opposing now that which it helped make palatable just last year. Fiscal responsibility is dead, and Republicans helped bury it. Put the shovels away, there’s no digging it up now.

For what it’s worth, I hope genuine fiscal responsibility isn’t dead.

Maybe it’s been hibernating ever since Reagan left office (like Pepperidge Farm, I’m old enough to remember those wonderful years).

Subsequent Republican presidents liked to copy Reagan’s rhetoric, but they definitely didn’t copy his policies.

• Spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of George H.W. Bush.
• Spending restraint also was hibernating during the presidency of George W. Bush.
• And spending restraint was hibernating during the presidency of Donald Trump.

I’m not the only one to notice GOP hypocrisy.

Here are some excerpts from a 2019 column in the Washington Post by Fareed Zakaria.

In what Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government — Trump has been profoundly unconservative. …Trump has now added more than $88 billion in taxes in the form of tariffs, according to the right-leaning Tax Foundation. (Despite what the president says, tariffs are taxes on foreign goods paid by U.S. consumers.) This has had the effect of reducing gross domestic product and denting the wages of Americans. …For decades, conservatives including Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan preached to the world the virtues of free trade. But perhaps even more, they believed in the idea that governments should not pick winners and losers in the economy… Yet the Trump administration…behaved like a Central Planning Agency, granting exemptions on tariffs to favored companies and industries, while refusing them to others. …In true Soviet style, lobbyists, lawyers and corporate executives now line up to petition government officials for these treasured waivers, which are granted in an opaque process… On the core issue that used to define the GOP — economics — the party’s agenda today is state planning and crony capitalism.

Zakaria is right about Republicans going along with most of Trump’s bad policies (as illustrated by this cartoon strip).*

The bottom line is that Republicans would be much more effective arguing against Biden’s spending orgy had they also argued for spending restraint when Trump was in the White House.

P.S. It will be interesting to see what happens in the near future. Will the GOP be a small-government Reagan party or a big-government Trump party?

Or maybe it will go back to being a Nixon-type party, which would mean bigger government but without mean tweets. And there are plenty of options.

• Common-good capitalism
• Nationalist conservatism
• Reform conservatism
• Kinder-and-gentler conservatism
• Compassionate conservatism

If they make the wrong choice (anything other than Reaganism), Margaret Thatcher has already warned us about the consequences.

*To be fair, Republicans also went along with Trump’s good policies. It’s just unfortunate that spending restraint wasn’t one of them.

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A Battlefield Conversion on Fiscal Policy for the GOP

I have relentlessly criticized Republicans in recent years for being profligate big spenders.

But I have some good news. The GOP is finding religion and is once again fretting about big government.

The bad news is that many of them are total hypocrites.

The only reason that they’re now beating their chests about fiscal responsibility is that there’s now a Democrat in the White House pushing for big government rather than a Republican in the White House pushing for big government.

Talking a few days ago with Politifact, I remarked on the GOP’s battlefield conversion.

“The very narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will make big policy changes difficult for Biden,” said Daniel Mitchell, a conservative economist with decades of experience in Washington. “Republicans were big spenders under Trump, but they’ll dust off their fiscal conservatism rhetoric with Biden in the White House. …”There will be unanimous, or near-unanimous, GOP opposition to the tax increases,” Mitchell said. That could make passage difficult.

I’m not the only one to notice Republicans change their spots when Democrats are in charge.

In her Washington Post column, Catherine Rampell also notes their hypocrisy.

It’s almost like clockwork. As soon as a Democrat enters the White House, Republicans pretend to care about deficits again. …And so Republicans laid the groundwork for blocking the Biden administration’s request for more covid-19 fiscal relief, on the grounds that further spending is not merely unnecessary but also irresponsible. …These foul-weather fiscal hawks neglect to mention, …before the coronavirus pandemic — the Republican-controlled Senate passed and President Donald Trump signed spending bills that added…$2 trillion to deficits.

If Ms. Rampell’s column focused solely on Republicans behaving inconsistently, I would fully applaud.

Unfortunately, she also used the opportunity to make some assertions that deserve some pushback. Beginning with what she said about the 2017 tax reform.

…the GOP’s prized 2017 tax cuts added nearly $2 trillion to deficits.

It is true that the legislation is a short-run tax cut, but there’s no long-run revenue reduction because many of the provisions expire at the end of 2025.

And, as Brian Riedl made clear in this chart, the tax cuts only play a tiny role even if all the provisions ultimately are made permanent.

Ms. Rampell then makes a Keynesian argument that more spending would be stimulative.

…the U.S. economy actually needs more federal spending, and President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion plan… Republicans objecting to Biden’s proposal…seem to be writing off the need for more relief entirely, at least now that a Democrat is president.

Is she right about Republican hypocrisy? Yes.

Is she right that bigger government produces growth? No.

If Biden and the Democrats were simply arguing that some level of handouts are needed and justified to compensate for government-mandated shutdowns, I wouldn’t be happy, but I also wouldn’t complain.

But I do object to the mechanistic argument that government can magically produce prosperity by borrowing money from the economy’s left pocket and putting it in the economy’s right pocket.

At best, the borrow-and-spend approach only produces a transitory bump in consumption, but does nothing for real problem of inadequate income (which is why we should focus on GDI rather than GDP).

She also engages in a bit of historical revisionism about Obama’s failed stimulus from 2009.

This is, not coincidentally, almost exactly what they did about a decade ago. …Republicans suddenly demanded to turn off fiscal (and monetary) spigots once Barack Obama was elected.

In reality, Republicans didn’t control either the House or Senate in Obama’s first two years. He was able to adopt his so-called stimulus. And the economy was stagnant.

Republicans did win the House at the end of 2010 and were somewhat successful in controlling spending for the next few years. And that’s when the economy did better.

Just like it did better during the Reagan and Clinton years when there was spending restraint.

To put this discussion in the proper context, I’ll close with another chart from Brian Riedl. The long-run problem we face is not red ink. Deficits and debt are merely the symptom of the real problem of excessive government spending.

P.S. I wish Politicifact had identified me as a libertarian. I’m only willing to be called a conservative if that means Reaganism, but I worry it now means Trumpism.

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Ten Observations about Trump and the GOP

Since I’m a policy wonk, I rarely play the role of political pundit other than biennial election predictions.

But I’m getting a lot of requests to comment about Trump, especially in light of the recent protest/riot/insurrection and the ongoing political fallout (impeachment, etc).

So here are 10 observations (full disclosure: I didn’t vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020, but have never been part of the Never-Trump community).

Trump’s style is bluster and bullying – As I wrote way back before the 2016 election, Trump’s personal style is akin to a temperamental child. This can be entertaining (which is why CNN and other networks gave him so much attention during his initial campaign), but it also has limitations as an approach to governance (for instance, you don’t stop a virus by merely asserting it won’t come to the United States).

Trump is America’s “Crazy Uncle” – Early in his presidency, I happened to be in New Zealand and was asked about Trump in a TV interview. I basically said he’s like a grouchy and opinionated uncle who shows up on holidays and dominates the conversation with controversial statements. Given what’s happened over the past few years, that observation holds up well.

Republicans lawmakewrs in Washington never liked Trump – GOPers in the House and Senate like some of the things Trump has accomplished (tax reform and conservative judges), but they’ve never liked having him as president because he is too erratic and too self-centered. But most important, they’ve been afraid his simultaneous popularity (with core GOP primary voters) and unpopularity (with, say, suburbanites) is a threat to their ability to stay in power. In other words, it’s hard to win general elections in some places as a Trumpian populist but also hard to win GOP primaries in many places as a Never-Trumper.

Republican voters, by contrast, like Trump – One thing that surprised me over the past four yeas is that I found strong support for Trump from grassroots conservative Republicans. Yes, they didn’t like his fiscal profligacy and they mostly didn’t like his protectionism, but they did like the fact that he was a “fighter,” unlike so many (but not all) Republican politicians who get cozy with the DC establishment. They also figured he was worth supporting because he was so reviled by the establishment media (i.e., the enemy of my enemy is my friend).

Republican lawmakers generally have been in a no-win situation – Because of Trump’s popularity with GOP voters, Republican lawmakers have felt a lot of pressure to act as Trump loyalists even though many of them don’t like his behavior and disagree with some of his policies.

Be glad there were normal GOPers in the Trump Administration – Some people in the Never-Trump community want to create a blacklist of people who worked for Trump. This is misguided in the vast majority of cases. Most Trump appointees had nothing to do with Trump’s excesses and instead did good things (deregulation, for instance) in the various agencies and departments where they worked.

There are three GOP wings: Populist Trumpies, conservative Reaganites, and the establishment – Most pundits portray GOP infighting as a battles between Trumpist conservatives and the Republican establishment (symbolized, perhaps, by Sen. Romney). But that’s an insufficient description of what’s happening because it overlooks the fact that there are plenty of Reagan-style conservatives who definitely are not part of the establishment, yet don’t fit in with Trump’s big-government populism. It will be very interesting to see which anti-establishment strain wields more influence in the next few years.

Trump’s legacy to GOP: Total Democratic control of DC – On January 21, 2017, Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. Four years later (a few days from now), Democrats will control the House, the Senate, and the White House. By way of background, one of the reasons I don’t like George W. Bush is that his failed polices paved the way for the left to have total control of Washington in 2009 and 2010. Shouldn’t Trump be judged similarly?

In spite of his many flaws, why did Trump win normally Democratic states? – While I just explained that Trump set the stage for the left to have total power in Washington, Republicans need to figure out how Trump managed to win some states in 2016 that historically have been unwinnable when contested by establishment Republicans (though he lost some traditionally GOP-leaning states in 2020).

In spite of his many flaws, why did Trump get more minority votes? – Similarly, Republicans need to figure out how a supposedly racist Trump managed to win a higher percentage of minority voters than recent GOP nominees such as John McCain and Mitt Romney. The bottom line is Republicans need to figure out if there are good parts of Trumpism once Trump is out of the picture.

I’ll close with a few statements:

• It is perfectly okay to have voted for Trump because you liked some of his policies (whether they are ones I like, such as tax cuts, or ones I don’t like, such as protectionism).
• It is perfectly okay to have voted against Trump for the same reason.
• It is perfectly okay to have voted for Trump because you wanted to shake up the Washington establishment with unconventional behavior.
• It is perfectly okay to have voted against Trump because his unconventional behavior was offensive.
• It is perfectly okay to have been a Never-Trumper or a Trumpian populist.
• What’s not okay, though, is to engage in political violence.
• And what’s utterly awful is lying to supporters and creating the conditions for political violence.

P.S. While it’s worth spending some time to dissect and analyze the past four years, I hope that libertarians, Reagan conservatives, Trump populists, Never-Trumpers, establishment Republicans, etc, all join together to fight some of Biden’s awful ideas (the “public option” threat to private health insurance, class-warfare taxes, gun control, a blue-state bailout, etc).

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In 2021 and Beyond, Will the GOP be a Reagan Party or a Trump Party?

Even though my 2020 prediction for the presidential race was much more accurate than my 2016 prediction, I’m definitely a policy wonk rather than a political pundit.

That being said, I’m very interested in elections because voting patterns eventually can translate into policy changes.

And some of the voting patterns from Tuesday were rather surprising. For instance, I was shocked at the data that compared 2016 exit poll data with 2020 exit poll data and found that Trump got more votes in 2020 from every group other than white men.

And I was also shocked to learn that Trump did a much better job of attracting non-white votes than any other Republican candidate in recent history.

https://twitter.com/adrian_gray/status/1324012494751485952

My pro-Trump friends tell me that this is evidence that a Trumpian approach is capable of attracting new voters, particularly minorities. Indeed, they tell me that Trumpism should be the model for all the politicians who may think about going for the Republican nomination in 2024.

So, as part of my post-election analysis (see here, here, here, and here), let’s explore whether the GOP will be (or should) a Trump party.

We’ll start with an article that Sean Trende authored for Real Clear Politics.

The Democratic playbook against Republicans had remained more or less the same since 1992. You could portray the GOP candidate as someone who wanted to gut Medicare and Social Security. Or, you could portray him as a closet theocrat. …Every major GOP candidate was vulnerable to at least one of these attacks, and usually both. As for Trump? Neither of those attacks landed. He famously opposed entitlement reform, and ran as a big-spending Republican. And the closet theocrat charge? Needless to say, that mantle is hard to hang on Trump. …there’s no going back for Republicans. …it is a “NeverTrump” delusion that the old GOP coalition is going to be resurrected. The political demand isn’t there, and whomever is nominated in 2024 will likely have an agenda that more closely resembles Trump’s than Mitt Romney’s. …The successful Republican candidates over the past 50 years have all had a cultural connection to what some jokingly call ’Murica.  …Reagan spoke the language of Middle America. To be sure, Donald Trump’s vulgarity contrasts sharply with Reagan’s class, and that has limited his opportunities for political success substantially, but he nevertheless connects with a group of voters.

Elaina Plott, in a piece for the New York Times, explains that the GOP is now a Trumpist party, even if that simply means being more willing to fight.

…for all the attention paid to what Trump represents in American politics, the most salient feature of his ascent within the Republican Party might be what he doesn’t represent. When Ronald Reagan overthrew the old order of the Republican Party in the 1980 election, he did so as the figurehead of a conservative movement… Trump’s takeover, by contrast, has been as one-dimensional as it has been total. In the space of one term, the president has co-opted virtually every power center in the Republican Party… But though he has disassembled much of the old order, he has built very little in its place. …That this is no longer Paul Ryan’s party is clear. What Trump has turned it into, though, is less so. …“The party right now is just Trump, right?” said one senior Senate G.O.P. aide. “So when you take him out of it, what do we have left?” …The difficulty with engineering a new paradigm that builds on Trump’s 2016 win is that the president himself is not especially committed to it. …the one thing that truly unified the Republican base in its support of Trump was a belief that he was a “fighter.” …the Republican base today is willing to bend more on policy in service of what it believes to be a more existential war.

Interestingly, even ardent anti-Trumpers seem to think Trump-style politics will outlast Trump.

In a column for the Chicago Tribune, Eric Zorn frets that post-Trump Trumpism will be very effective.

Trumpism — an unapologetically coarse, swaggering and nasty brand of politics — has been vindicated. Forget competence. Forget dignity. Forget class. Even forget policy (remember Trump’s health care plan that was always just two weeks away from unveiling?). Tribalism is king. Fear clobbers hope. Truth is optional. Character doesn’t count. The guardrails are down. …The GOP looks likely to hold the Senate, which means Republicans can put a brick on any legislation a President Joe Biden would want to pass. Trump has already given the GOP three U.S. Supreme Court justices and conservative control of the judicial branch of government for at least a generation… a Democratic President Biden, flailing impotently against a recalcitrant Republican Senate, would likely boost the GOP’s fortunes in the 2022 midterms and position the party well for the presidential race two years later. With Trump and his family safely on the sidelines, Republicans could nominate a candidate who inspires their base with shameless bluster and schoolyard insults, but who actually knows a thing or two about governing. Trumpism without Trump. An even more frightening thought in some ways than Trumpism with Trump.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Last of the never-Trumper Bulwark writes that there will be a battle for the GOP’s soul and that the Trumpists will prevail.

If Donald Trump loses, there is going to be a civil war inside the Republican party and the conservative movement. On one side will be the Trumpists, who believe all of white nationalism and authoritarian stuff. On the other side will be the Vichycons, who never liked Trump, but who went along with Trumpism because they were partisans… Here is how the civil war will play out. …After the inauguration, all three of these groups will join together to oppose anything and everything the Biden administration does and it will look like comity. …Once it becomes clear that Trump plans on being the one to choose the 2024 nominee, he’ll have a large base of support and the Republican party will be faced with the same decision matrix it had in mid-2016. …if Republican primary voters want more Trumpism, then the Republican party will continue down this path, no matter what the Vichycons say. The Vichycons will have the magazines and op-ed pages, and a handful of elected Republicans. The Trumpists will have an active former president of the United States, his family, Fox, …and a floor of probably 30 million voters. I know which side I would bet on.

Last but not least, in a must-read article for New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann writes about how Trump won in 2016, how he governed, and what will happen after he leaves.

…is there a future in Trumpism? …An ambitious Republican can’t ignore Trumpism. …But is it possible to address it without opening a Pandora’s box of virulent rage and racism? …The Republican Party has long had a significant nativist, isolationist element. In the Party’s collective memory, this faction was kept in check by “fusionism,” a grand entente between this element and the Party’s business establishment. …Trump…didn’t talk about the need for limited government or for balancing the federal budget. …He didn’t extoll free trade. He didn’t court the Koch brothers. He did not sign the no-new-tax pledge… Trump was opposed by more officials in his own Party (the Never Trumpers of their title) than any Presidential nominee in recent American history. …Trump’s key insight in 2016 was that the Republican establishment could be ignored, and his primary campaign pitched only to the Republican base, which no longer believed in the free-market gospel, if it ever had. …the difference between Trump as a candidate and Trump as the President goes back to fusionism. …appointees without previous connections to Trump but with deep connections to the Party’s libertarian wing have put in place an enhanced version of the standard Republican program. The result has been an odd mix of traditional Republican policies and Trumpian rhetorical flourishes. …As Trump has outsourced economic policy to the establishment, he has outsourced social policy to the evangelicals. …Steven Hayward, a well-connected conservative who has written the two-volume history “The Age of Reagan,” told me, “The biggest surprise about Trump is that he has turned out to govern as a conservative. …That raises the question of where the Republican Party will go after he leaves office. …there are three competing predictions about the future of the Party over the coming years. Let’s call them the Remnant, Restoration, and Reversal scenarios.

And here are those three camps, starting with the “Remnant” crowd, who are the heirs to Trumpism.

Could somebody else use the Trump playbook to win a Presidential election? Those who believe in the Remnant scenario think so. …The obvious candidate to carry out a high Trumpist strategy in 2024 would be Donald Trump, Jr… Several other potential Republican candidates, most notably Senators Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, and Josh Hawley, of Missouri, have demonstrated that they see Trump’s success as instructive.

Next we have the “Restoration” group, who want the GOP to be a Reagan-style party.

Under the Restoration scenario, …Republicans, as if waking from a bad dream, could recapture their essential identity for the past hundred years as the party of business. They could revive a Reagan-like optimistic rhetoric of freedom and enterprise… Many Never Trumpers would feel comfortable again in a Restorationist Republican Party. Restoration could entail a conventionally positioned Presidential candidate, such as Mike Pence… But the most discussed Restorationist candidate is Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and a former U.N. ambassador.

Then we have the “Reversal” folks, who want the GOP to be the anti-capitalism party.

The Reversal scenario, though perhaps the least plausible, is the most threatening to the Democratic Party. The parties would essentially switch the roles they have had for the past century: the Republicans would replace the Democrats as the party of the people, the one with a greater emphasis on progressive economic policies… today poorer districts are far more likely to vote Republican and richer districts are far more likely to vote Democratic. …People in this camp talk about the failures of “neoliberalism,” “financialization,” and “market fundamentalism,” and condemn “zombie Reaganism.” …The favored Presidential candidate for 2024 among the Reversalists is Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida.

Now for my two cents.

Since I prefer Reagan over Trump, that presumably puts me in the “Restoration” camp.

But I don’t think many people care what I prefer, so I’ll wrap up by giving my prediction of what will happen.

In the post-Trump environment, I think Republicans will revert to their normal behavior (i.e., the “Restoration” folks will prevail), but only if they absorb two Trump-style flourishes.

• From a stylistic perspective, I think the desire for “a fighter” is what many voters found appealing about Trump (as was mentioned above in Elaina Plott’s article from the New York Times). My guess is that a lot of Republicans will copy that aspect of Trump’s behavior, but obviously without the silly tweets and insults. I hope that means no tax-hiking budget deals.
• From a policy perspective, I think the biggest change will be less sympathy for trade and immigration. To the extent I have any influence with Republicans, I’ll try to convince them to at least protect and promote free trade with other democratic nations. And I’ll also remind them that high-skill immigration (such as the people we attract with the EB-5 program) is worth preserving.

So which Republican can best mix Reaganism with those two bits of Trumpism?

Beats me.

P.S. For what it’s worth (and I don’t think it’s worth much since it’s far too early), here’s some polling data on Republican preferences for the the 2024 nomination.

Keep in mind that this poll took place last year, when the economy was booming and voters presumably had a more positive view of President Trump. I suspect the Trump children would not do as well if the poll was repeated today.

P.P.S. My nightmare scenario is that GOP politicians decide the lesson of Trumpism is that they should copy his approach of being weak-kneed on the issue of genuine entitlement reform.

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Are Republicans Now the (Second) Party of Big Government?

When I talked to CNBC on Wednesday, I was very critical of Trump and other Republicans for promoting protectionism, Keynesian monetary policy, and wasteful spending.

Yes, I give Trump and the GOP credit for improvements in regulatory policy and tax policy. And I used to think that the pro-growth effect of those reforms was enough to balance out the anti-growth effects of the bad policies.

But I now think the net effect of the Trump presidency is to expand the overall burden of government.

In early July, my report card on Trump’s economic policy (based on the five key indices in Economic Freedom of the World) had him slightly above a C average.

Now, as you can see, he’s slightly below. And since Republicans in Congress are largely going along with Trump’s policies, they also deserve blame.

I realize that people also care about other matters, such as social issues, the judiciary, and foreign policy, so it’s not my goal to influence how anyone votes.

But I do want people to understand that economic policy matters. And for readers who like Trump (or at least think he’s a less-worse alternative than Sanders, Harris, Warren, etc), be forewarned that Trump’s big-government policies are increasing the probability of having Democrats win in 2020.

The lesson Republicans should have learned from Ronald Reagan is that good policy is good politics (my Fourth Theorem of Government).

George H.W. Bush didn’t learn that lesson. George W. Bush didn’t learn that lesson. And now Trump is demonstrating that he didn’t learn that lesson.

P.S. Some of us knew ahead of time to expect bad policy from Trump.

P.P.S. Since my 2016 election prediction was wrong, feel free to ignore my political prognosticating.

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The Right-Wing Debate Between Classical Liberalism and Bigger Government

I wrote yesterday about the debate among leftists, which is partly a contest between Bernie Sanders-style socialists and Elizabeth Warren-style corporatists.

Now let’s look at the debate on the right.

There’s an ongoing argument over what it means to be conservative, especially when thinking about the role of the federal government.

You can view this debate – if you peruse this “political compass test” – as being a battle over whether it is best for conservatism to be represented by Friedrich Hayek or Angela Merkel? By Donald Trump or Gary Johnson?

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a debate between whether the right believes in the principles of small-state classical liberalism or whether it thinks government should have the power to steer society.

Representing the latter view, here’s some of what Henry Olsen wrote for the Washington Post.

…libertarian-minded opinion leaders have criticized Trump… For these people, Trump was…an apostate whose heresies had to be cast out of the conservative church. Trump’s overwhelming victory in the primaries should have shocked them out of their ideological slumber. …the market fundamentalists seem to see nothing— absolutely nothing — about today’s capitalism to dislike. …National Review’s founder, William F. Buckley, famously wrote that…the federal government’s proper peacetime duties are solely to “protect its citizens’ lives, liberty, and property.” With respect to its efforts to do anything else, “we are, without reservation, on the libertarian side.” But that dog don’t hunt politically. ..libertarian-conservatives remain oblivious or intentionally in denial… The New Deal’s intellectual core, that the federal government should vigorously act to correct market failures, remains at the center of what Americans expect from Washington. Trump’s nomination and election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that even a majority of Republicans agree. Less doctrinaire conservative thinkers understand this. Ramesh Ponnuru noted in his National Review essay that…capitalism “require[s] invigoration” as a result. The American Enterprise Institute’s Yuval Levin goes further, noting that “sometimes our economic policy has to be determined by more than purely economic considerations.” Other factors, such as social order and family formation, are also worthy goals to which pure economic efficiency or growth must bend at times. …this debate is fundamental to the future of conservatism and perhaps of the United States itself.

And here’s the beginning of a history-filled article by Joshua Tait in the National Interest.

When FOX television host Tucker Carlson recently attacked conservative faith in free market economics, he probably surprised a number of his viewers. For too long, Carlson charged, libertarians and social conservatives have ignored the fundamental part economic structures play in undermining communities. Families are crushed beneath market forces. Disposable goods—fueled by consumer culture—provide little salve for drug addiction and suicide. Markets are a “tool,” Carlson said, not a “religion.” “You’d have to be a fool to worship” them. Carlson put a primetime spin on an argument that has been brewing for some time on the right. Just as the 2008 economic collapse and the national prominence of Bernie Sanders have begun to shift the Democratic Party’s stance toward socialism, so the long effects of the downturn and Trump’s election have caused a rethinking of conservative commitment to free markets.

Last but not least, Jonah Goldberg examines a slice of this divide in a column for National Review.

The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called “fusionism.” The concept…was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked. …Today, conservative forces concerned with freedom and virtue are pulling apart. The catalyst is a sprawling coalition of self-described nationalists, Catholic integralists, protectionists, economic planners, and others who are increasingly rallying around something called “post-liberal” conservativism. By “liberal,” they…mean classical liberalism, the Enlightenment worldview held by the Founding Fathers. What the post-liberals want is hard to summarize beyond generalities. They seek a federal government that cares more about pursuing the “highest good” than protecting the “libertarian” (their word) system of individual rights and free markets. …On the other side are…conservatives who…still rally to the banner of classical liberalism and its philosophy of natural rights and equality under the law. …this intellectual mudfight really is…about what conservatism will mean after Trump is gone from the scene. …the so-called post-liberals now want Washington to dictate how we should all pursue happiness, just so long as it’s from the right. …Where the post-liberals have a point is that humans are happiest in communities, families and institutions of faith. The solution to the culture wars is to allow more freedom for these “little platoons” of civil society… What America needs is less talk of national unity — from the left or the right — and more freedom to let people live the way they want to live, not just as individuals, but as members of local communities. We don’t need to move past liberalism, we need to return to it.

For what it’s worth, I prefer Jonah’s analysis.

But I’ll also make three additional points.

First, if we care about maximizing freedom and prosperity, there’s no substitute for classical liberalism.

In my lifetime, there have been various alternatives to free markets. There was pre-Reagan Rockefeller Republicanism, post-Reagan “kinder and gentler,” George W. Bush’s so-called compassionate conservatism, reform conservatism, and now various strains of Trumpism and populism.

It may very well be true that some of these alternatives are more politically palatable (though I’m skeptical given the GOP’s unparalleled electoral success with an anti-big government message in 1980, 1994, 2010, and 2014).

But even if some alternatives are more popular, the associated policies will hurt people in the long run. That’s a point I made when arguing for supply-side tax cuts over family-friendly tax cuts.

In other words, you demonstrate compassion by giving people opportunity to prosper, not by giving them other people’s money.

Second, there’s nothing about classical liberalism or capitalism that suggests people should be selfish and atomistic.

Indeed, I pointed out, starting at the 3:36 point of this interview, that a libertarian society is what allows family, neighborhood, and community to flourish.

And, as Jonah explained, the “platoons” of “civil society” are more likely to thrive in an environment where the central government is constrained.

My third and final point is that I’m pessimistic.

The debate on the left is basically about how to make government bigger and how fast that process should occur.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a similar debate on the right, featuring different theories of how to shrink the size and scope of government.

Instead, the Reaganite-oriented classical liberals are the only ones who want America to become more like Hong Kong, while all the competing approaches basically envision government getting bigger, albeit at a slower rate than preferred by folks on the left.

In other words, we’re in a political environment where everyone on the left is debating how quickly to become Mexico and many people on the right are debating how quickly to become France.

No wonder I’ve identified an escape option if America goes down the wrong path.

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Five Takeaways from the 2018 Elections…and Implications for Liberty

We had an election yesterday in the United States (or, as Mencken sagely observed, an advance auction of stolen goods). Here are five things to keep in mind about the results.

First, the GOP did better than most people (including me) expected.

This tweet captures the zeitgeist of last night.

A lot of painful losses for Republicans tonight, but man would I be unhappy if I was a Democrat tonight with these results in this climate.

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) November 7, 2018

The Senate results were especially disappointing for the Democrats. It does appear the Kavanaugh fight worked out very well for Republicans.

Second, better-than-expected election news for the GOP does not imply better-than-expected news for public policy. Given Trump’s semi-big-government populism, I fear this tweet is right about the increased risk of a counterproductive infrastructure package and a job-destroying increase in the minimum wage.

https://twitter.com/freddoso/status/1060036820795183104

For what it’s worth, I think we’ll also get even more pork-filled appropriations spending. In other words, busting the spending caps after already busting the spending caps.

The only thing that might save taxpayers is that Democrats in the House may be so fixated on investigating and persecuting Trump that it poisons the well in terms of cooperating on legislation.

Fingers crossed for gridlock!

Third, there was mixed news when looking at the nation’s most important ballot initiatives.

On the plus side, Colorado voters rejected an effort to replace the flat tax with a discriminatory system (in order to waste even more money on government schools), California voters sensibly stopped the spread of rent control, Washington voters rejected a carbon tax, Florida voters expanded supermajority requirements for tax increases, and voters in several states legalized marijuana.

On the minus side, voters in four states opted to expand the bankrupt Medicaid program, Arizona voters sided with teacher unions over children and said no to expanded school choice, and voters in two states increased the minimum wage.

Fourth, Illinois is about to accelerate in the wrong direction. Based on what happened last night, it’s quite likely that the state’s flat tax will be replaced by a class-warfare-based system. In other words, the one bright spot in a dark fiscal climate will be extinguished.

This will accelerate the out-migration of investors, entrepreneurs, and businesses, which is not good news for a state that is perceived to be most likely to suffer a fiscal collapse. It’s just a matter of time before the Land of Lincoln becomes the land of bankruptcy.

Interesting, deep-blue Connecticut voters elected a Republican governor. Given the state’s horrific status, I suspect this won’t make a difference.

Fifth, Obama was a non-factor. Democrats lost almost every race where he campaigned.

Obama took norm-breaking step of campaigning in midterm against his successor. Visited Indiana, Georgia, Florida in recent days. Didn't go well. Indiana and Florida flipped Senate seats from Dem to GOP. Democrat Abrams lost governor race in GA.

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) November 7, 2018

Though I should point out that he deserves credit for trying to have an impact in close races. Many top-level politicians, looking to have a good “batting average,” only offer help to campaigns that are likely to prevail.

That being said, this adds to my hypothesis that Obama was basically an inconsequential president.

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Swamp-Creature Republicans Think They Can Atone for a Spending Binge with a Hollow (and Sure-to-Lose) Vote for the Wrong Version of a Constitutional Amendment

My major long-run project during Obama’s presidency was to educate Republicans in Washington about the need for genuine entitlement reform. I explained to them that the United States was doomed, largely because of demographics, to suffer a Greek-style fiscal future if we left policy on autopilot.

Needless to say, I didn’t expect any positive reforms while Obama was in the White House.

Instead, I proselytized for fiscal sanity in hopes that the GOP might be willing to fix our fiscal mess if they had total control of the White House and Congress after the 2016 election.

And it seemed like things were moving in the right direction.

After they took power in 2010, House Republicans repeatedly voted for budget resolutions that included meaningful changes to Medicaid, Medicare, and Obamacare, as well as reductions in wasteful pork-barrel spending. And after the 2014 GOP landslide, Senate Republicans also voted for a budget resolution that assumed good reform.

Then we got the unexpected Trump victory in 2016 and Republicans held all the levers of power starting in 2017.

Sounds like good news for advocates of spending restraint, right?

That may be true in some alternative universe, but that’s definitely not the case in Washington.

As I warned before the election, President Trump is a big-government Republican. And a majority of congressional GOPers, after years of chest beating about the importance of spending restraint, suddenly have decided that the swamp is really a hot tub.

In 2017, my main gripe was that Republicans committed a sin of omission. They had power and didn’t adopt good reforms.

In 2018, they shifted to a sin of commission, voting to bust the spending caps as part of an orgy of new spending.

And guess what they want to do for an encore?

In the ultimate add-insult-to-injury gesture, Republicans (at least the ones in the House) are hoping voters will overlook their profligacy because they’re going to have a symbolic vote on a poorly drafted version of a balanced budget amendment.

The House is slated to vote next week on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution… The decision to bring the measure — which would require Congress not to spend more than it brings in — to the floor comes just weeks after the passage of a $1.3 trillion spending package that is projected to add billions to the deficit. …The measure has virtually no chance of becoming law as it would need Democratic support in the Senate and ratification from the majority of states.

This is insulting.

These clowns vote to expand the burden of spending and now they want to hoodwink voters with a sham vote for something that has no chance of happening (an amendment requires two-thirds support from both the House and Senate, and then would require ratification from three-fourths of state legislatures).

Do they really think we’re that stupid?!?

To make matters worse, they’re not even proposing a good version of an amendment. Here’s the core provision of H.J. Res 2.

Section 1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless three-fifths of the whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a rollcall vote.

Sound reasonable and innocuous, but I’ve been telling folks on Capitol Hill this is the wrong approach. I pointed out that 49 out of 50 states have some form of balanced budget requirement, yet that doesn’t stop states such as Illinois, California, and New Jersey from over-taxing and over-spending, or from accumulating more debt.

I also explained that the so-called Maastricht rules in the European Union operate in a similar fashion, yet that hasn’t stopped nations such as Greece, France, and Italy from over-taxing and over-spending, or from accumulating more debt.

The problem, I explained, is that anti-deficit rules simply give politicians an excuse to raise taxes (which leads to more spending and more red ink, but I don’t think that causes many sleepless nights for elected officials).

If Republicans are going to go through the trouble of having a phony and symbolic vote, they should at least craft a good amendment. In other words, they should rally behind some sort of spending cap modeled after what exists in Switzerland and Hong Kong. They could even use Representative Kevin Brady’s widely praised MAP Act as a template.

A spending cap is far superior to a balanced-budget rule for two reasons.

1. A spending cap puts the focus on the real problem of excessive growth of government. And if you impose some sort of cap that complies with the Golden Rule, you simultaneously address the real problem of too much spending and the symptom of red ink.
2. A spending cap is much easier to enforce since politicians know that spending can only increase each year by, say 2 percent. A balanced-budget rule, by contrast, is inherently unstable and unworkable because annual revenues can jump or fall significantly depending on economic conditions.

And it’s not just me saying this. Even left-leaning international bureaucracies such as the International Monetary Fund (twice), the European Central Bank, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (twice) have acknowledged that spending caps are the only effective fiscal rule.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Republican politicians are behaving in a despicable fashion.

So you can understand my caustic and frustrated responses in this recent interview with Charles Payne. I’m upset because it’s quite likely that Trump’s spending splurge eventually is going to lead to higher taxes.

I pointed out in the interview that Trump was in a position of power. He could have won the budget fight if he was willing to play hardball with a shutdown.

And I also explained that there shouldn’t be a Washington infrastructure plan for the simple reason that we shouldn’t have a federal Department of Transportation.

Let’s conclude with some sarcasm. I don’t know if the former leader of Tanzania ever uttered this quote I saw on Reddit‘s Libertarian Meme page. But if he did say it, he was spot on.

And here’s a clever bit of humor that I saw on Reddit‘s Libertarian page.

Except the image is unfair. I’ve crunched the numbers. Democrats generally don’t increase spending as fast as Republicans.

With one impressive exception.

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Everything You Need to Know about the Budget Deal in One Image

Ever since there was a deal to bust the budget caps back in February, I knew it was just a matter of time before Congress and the White House responded with an odious orgy of new spending.

Some people told me I was being too pessimistic.

After all, the President’s Office of Management and Budget has a big banner on the budget webpage. It boldly states that President Trump is going to “reverse the trend of rising government spending.”

But I’ve learned to discount the rhetoric of politicians. It’s more important to look at the actual budget numbers in legislation that the President signs into law.

And that’s what Trump did yesterday, giving his approval to a bill that funds the parts of the budget included in annual appropriations.

So did he “reverse the trend”?

The good news is that the answer is yes. But the bad news is that he reversed the trend by increasing spending faster than Obama.

I’m not joking. Courtesy of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, here are the year-over-year numbers for various parts of the bill.* This table tells you everything you need to know about the grotesque recklessness of Washington.

An overall increase of 12.9 percent!

But maybe spending is climbing so rapidly because the cost of living has suddenly jumped?

Nope, that’s not an excuse. The CRFB put together a list of the major inflation projections. As you can see, there’s not the slightest sign of a spike in prices in either 2018 or 2019.

Indeed, it turns out that the Republican Congress and the Republican President decided to increase spending six times faster than needed to keep pace with inflation. Six times.

Yes, we can definitely say the spending trend has been reversed. Just not in a good way.

So who should be blamed, congressional Republicans or Trump?

The simple answer is both.

Trump is responsible because he could veto budget-busting bills. All he would need to do is tell the crowd on Capitol Hill that he is perfectly happy to close down the non-essential parts of the federal government until he gets some responsible legislation. Sooner or later, the pro-spending crowd would have to cave.

That being said, congressional GOPers also deserve blame. It’s a failure by the Republicans on the Appropriations Committee who are motivated by a desire to spend the maximum amount of money. It’s a failure of GOP leadership for not removing members from that Committee if they don’t agree to some level of spending restraint. It’s also a failure of leadership that they don’t get conservatives and moderates in a room and hammer out a common approach that would restrain the growth of Leviathan. And it’s a failure of the individual Senators and Representatives for not upholding the Constitution and not doing what’s right for the country.

But this also brings me back to Trump. If the President credibly drew a line in the sand and said “I’ll veto any spending bill that is over X”, that would change behavior on Capitol Hill. But Members of Congress believe (correctly, it seems) that Trump has no interest in fiscal restraint. So without any leadership from the White House, you get an every-man-for-himself, grab-as-much-pork-as-you-can attitude among lawmakers that makes it virtually impossible for leadership to pursue an effective strategy.

The net result is that politicians win, the special interests win, and the bureaucracy wins.

And who loses? Well, look in the mirror for the answer.

*The data in the CRFB table is for “budget authority” rather than “budget outlays.” These are closely related concepts, but technically different. When Congress approves “budget authority,” it is basically giving money to an agency. When the agencies then spend the money, it is “budget outlays.”

P.S. I’m a big fan of spending caps, but I confess that they aren’t very helpful if politicians simply change the law whenever they want more spending. The ultimate answer is to have constitutional spending limits, like Switzerland and Hong Kong, but amending the Constitution is hardly as easy task. So my best guess is that we’ll become Greece at some point.

P.P.S. Some people tell me not to worry because the real problem is entitlement spending rather than appropriated spending. They’re right that entitlements are the biggest long-run problem. But I point out that if GOPers aren’t willing to tackle the low-hanging fruit of pork-filled appropriations, that doesn’t fill me with optimism that they will ever adopt genuine entitlement reform.

P.P.P.S. The same people also claim that at least Republicans will hold the line on taxes. I think they’re hallucinating. If we don’t get control of spending, sooner or later we’ll get massive tax hikes. Which will make our fiscal problems worse, needless to say. But that’s our grim future because of GOP irresponsibility today.

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Because of Unresolved Issues such as Carried Interest and Revenue Neutrality, Will GOP Tax Reform Effort Become a Cluster-You-Know-What like Obamacare Repeal?

While I realize there’s zero hope of ripping up America’s awful tax code and getting a simple and fair flat tax, I’m nonetheless hopeful that there will be some meaningful incremental changes as part of the current effort to achieve some sort of tax reform.

A package that lowers the corporate rate, replaces depreciation with expensing, and ends the death tax would be very good for growth, and those good reforms could be at least partially financed by eliminating the state and local tax deduction and curtailing business interest deductions so that debt and equity are on a level playing field.

All that sounds good, and a package like this should be feasible since Republicans control both Congress and the White House (especially now that the BAT is off the table), but I warn in this interview that there are lots of big obstacles that could cause tax reform to become a disaster akin to the Obamacare repeal effort.

Here’s my list of conflicts that need to be solved in order to get some sort of plan through Congress and on to the President’s desk.

• Carried interest – Trump wants to impose a higher capital gains tax on a specific type of investment, but this irks many congressional GOPers who have long understood that any capital gains tax is a form of double taxation and should be abolished. The issue apparently has some symbolic importance to the President and it could become a major stumbling block if he digs in his heels.
• Tax cut or revenue neutrality – Budget rules basically require that tax cuts expire after 10 years. To avoid this outcome (which would undermine the pro-growth impact of any reforms), many lawmakers want a revenue-neutral package that could be permanent. But that means coming up with tax increases to offset tax cuts. That’s okay if undesirable tax preferences are being eliminated to produce more revenue, but defenders of those loopholes will then lobby against the plan.
• Big business vs small business – Everyone agrees that America’s high corporate tax rate is bad news for competitiveness and should be reduced. The vast majority of small businesses, however, pay taxes through “Schedule C” of the individual income tax, so they want lower personal rates to match lower corporate rates. That’s a good idea, of course, but would have major revenue implications and complicate the effort to achieve revenue neutrality.
• Budget balance – Republicans have long claimed that a major goal is balancing the budget within 10 years. That’s certainly achievable with a modest amount of spending restraint. And it’s even relatively simple to have a big tax cut and still achieve balance in 10 years with a bit of extra spending discipline. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s very little appetite for spending restraint in the White House or Capitol Hill, and this may hinder passage of a tax plan.
• Middle class tax relief – The main focus of the tax plan is boosting growth and competitiveness by reducing the burden on businesses and investment. That’s laudable, but critics will say “the rich” will get most of the tax relief. And even though the rich already pay most of the taxes and even though the rest of us will benefit from faster growth, Republicans are sensitive to that line of attack. So they will want to include some sort of provision designed for the middle class, but that will have major revenue implications and complicate the effort to achieve revenue neutrality.

There’s another complicating factor. At the risk of understatement, President Trump generates controversy. And this means he doesn’t have much power to use the bully pulpit.

Though I point out in this interview that this doesn’t necessarily cripple tax reform since the President’s most important role is to simply sign the legislation.

Before the 2016 election, I was somewhat optimistic about tax reform.

A few months ago, I was very pessimistic.

I now think something will happen, if for no other reason than Republicans desperately want to achieve something after botching Obamacare repeal.

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Republicans Embrace Bad Economics and Bad Policy

To be blunt, Republicans are heading in the wrong direction on fiscal policy. They have full control of the executive and legislative branches, but instead of using their power to promote Reaganomics, it looks like we’re getting a reincarnation of the big-government Bush years.

As Yogi Berra might have said, “it’s deja vu all over again.”

Let’s look at the evidence. According to the Hill, the Keynesian virus has infected GOP thinking on tax cuts.

Republicans are debating whether parts of their tax-reform package should be retroactive in order to boost the economy by quickly putting more money in people’s wallets.

That is nonsense. Just as giving people a check and calling it “stimulus” didn’t help the economy under Obama, giving people a check and calling it a tax cut won’t help the economy under Trump.

Tax cuts boost growth when they reduce the marginal tax rate on productive behavior such as work, saving, investment, or entrepreneurship. When that happens, people have an incentive to generate more income. And that leads to more national income, a.k.a., economic growth.

Borrowing money from the economy’s left pocket and then stuffing checks (oops, I mean retroactive tax cuts) in the economy’s right pocket, by contrast, simply reallocates national income.

Indeed, this is one of the reasons why the economy didn’t get much benefit from the 2001 Bush tax cut, especially when compared to the growth-oriented 2003 tax cut. Unfortunately, Republicans haven’t learned that lesson.

Republicans have taken steps in the past to ensure that taxpayers directly felt the benefits of tax cuts. As part of the 2001 tax cuts enacted by President George W. Bush, taxpayers received rebate checks.

The article does include some analysis from people who understand that retroactive tax cuts aren’t economically beneficial.

…there are also drawbacks to making tax changes retroactive. …such changes would add to the cost of the bill, but would not be an effective way to encourage new spending and investments. “It has all of the costs of the tax cuts but none of the economic benefits,” said Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget President Maya MacGuineas, who added that “you don’t make investments in the rear-view mirror.”

I’m not always on the same side as Maya, but she’s right on this issue. You can’t encourage people to generate more income in the past. If you want more growth, you have to reduce marginal tax rates on future activity.

By the way, I’m not arguing that there is no political benefit to retroactive tax cuts. If Republicans simply stated that they were going to send rebate checks to curry favor with voters, I’d roll my eyes and shrug my shoulders.

But when they make Keynesian arguments to justify such a policy, I can’t help but get upset about the economic illiteracy.

Speaking of bad economic policy, GOPers also are pursuing bad spending policy.

Politico has a report on a potential budget deal where everyone wins…except taxpayers.

The White House is pushing a deal on Capitol Hill to head off a government shutdown that would lift strict spending caps long opposed by Democrats in exchange for money for President Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico, multiple sources said.

So much for Trump’s promise to get tough on the budget, even if it meant a shutdown.

Instead, the back-room negotiations are leading to more spending for all interest groups.

Marc Short, the White House’s director of legislative affairs, …also lobbied for a big budget increase for the Pentagon, another priority for Trump. …The White House is offering Democrats more funding for their own pet projects.

The only good news is that Democrats are so upset about the symbolism of the fence that they may not go for the deal.

Democrats show no sign of yielding on the issue. They have already blocked the project once.

Unfortunately, I expect this is just posturing. When the dust settles, I expect the desire for more spending (from both parties) will produce a deal that is bad news. At least for those of us who don’t want America to become Greece (any faster than already scheduled).

Republican and Democratic congressional aides have predicted for months that both sides will come together on a spending agreement to raise spending caps for the Pentagon as well as for nondefense domestic programs.

So let’s check our scorecard. On the tax side of the equation, we’ll hopefully still get some good policy, such as a lower corporate tax rate, but it probably will be accompanied by some gimmicky Keynesian policy.

On the spending side of the equation, it appears my fears about Trump may have been correct and he’s going to be a typical big-government Republican.

It’s possible, of course, that I’m being needlessly pessimistic and we’ll get the kinds of policies I fantasized about in early 2016. But I wouldn’t bet money on a positive outcome.

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America Needs Tax Cuts and Tax Reform, but Can the GOP Deliver?

It’s depressing to see how Republicans are bungling the Obamacare issue. But it’s also understandable since it’s politically difficult to reduce handouts once people get hooked on the heroin of government dependency (a point I made even before Obamacare was enacted).

Unfortunately, I fear that the GOP might bungle the tax issue as well. I was interviewed the other day by Dana Loesch on this topic and highlighted several issues.

• High income tax rates on households are a big penalty on small businesses that pay through Schedule C of the personal income tax.
• Getting Republicans on the same page will be very difficult until the House GOP ditches the misguided border adjustment tax.
• Hong Kong shows that eliminating withholding would create a political environment conducive to limited government.

Here’s the full discussion.

What’s especially frustrating about this issue is that taxes should be reduced. A lot.

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute debunks six tax myths. Here they are, followed by my two cents.

Myth #1: Long-term deficits are driven by tax cuts and falling revenues

Fact: They are driven entirely by rapid spending growth

Brian nails it. I made this same point earlier this year. Indeed, because the tax burden is projected to automatically increase over time, it is accurate to say that more than 100 percent of the long-run fiscal problem is caused by excessive spending (particularly poorly designed entitlement programs).

Myth #2: Democratic tax proposals would significantly reduce the deficit

Fact: Their most common proposals would raise little revenue

Once again, Brian is right. There are ways to significantly increase the tax burden in America, such as a value-added tax. But the class-warfare ideas that attract a lot of support on the left won’t raise much revenue because upper-income taxpayers have substantial control over the timing, level and composition of their income.

Myth #3: Taxing millionaires and corporations can balance the long-term budget

Fact: These taxes cannot cover Washington’s current commitments, much less new liberal wish lists

Since even the IRS has admitted that upper-income taxpayers finance a hugely disproportionate share of the federal government, it hardly seems fair to subject them to even more onerous penalties. Especially since the IRS data from the 1980s suggest punitive rates could lead to less revenue rather than more.

Myth #4: The U.S. income tax is more regressive than other nations

Fact: It is the most progressive in the entire OECD

There are several ways to slice the data, so one can quibble with Brian’s assertion. But when comparing taxes paid by the rich compared to taxes paid by the poor, it is true that the United States relies more on upper-income taxpayers than any other developed nation. Not because we tax the rich more, but because we tax the poor less.

Myth #5: The U.S. tax code is becoming more regressive over time

Fact: It has become increasingly progressive over the past 35 years

Brian is right. Child credits, changes in the standard deduction and personal exemptions, and the EITC have combined in recent decades to take millions of households off the tax rolls. And since the U.S. thankfully does not have a value-added tax, lower-income people are largely protected from taxation.

Myth #6: Tax rates do not matter much to economic growth

Fact: They are among the most important factors

There are many factors that determine a nation’s economic success, including trade policy, regulation, monetary policy, and rule of law, so a good tax code isn’t a guarantor of prosperity and a bad tax system doesn’t automatically mean malaise. But Brian is right that taxation has a significant impact on growth.

In the interview, I said that I had two fantasies. First, I want to junk the corrupt internal revenue code and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.

Second, I’d ultimately like to shrink government so much that we could eliminate the income tax entirely.

Many people don’t realize that income taxes only began to plague the world about 100 years ago.

If we can somehow restore the kind of limited government envisioned by America’s Founders, the dream of no income tax could become a reality once again.

But if Republicans can’t even manage to cut taxes today, when they control both the executive and legislative branch, then neither one of my fantasies will ever become reality.

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The “Stupid Party” Strikes again with a Disheartening Deal to Avoid a Government Shutdown

Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House.

In theory, that means a long-overdue opportunity to eliminate wasteful programs and cut pork-barrel spending.

In reality, it mostly means business as usual.

Politicians in Washington just reached a deal to fund the government for the rest of the current fiscal year. As reported by the Washington Post, it’s not exactly a victory for libertarians or small-government conservatives.

Democrats are surprised by just how many concessions they extracted in the trillion-dollar deal, considering that Republicans have unified control of government. …Non-defense domestic spending will go up, despite the Trump team’s insistence he wouldn’t let that happen. The president called for $18 billion in cuts. Instead, he’s going to sign a budget with lots of sweeteners that grow the size of government. …the NIH will get a $2 billion boost — on top of the huge increase it got last year. …Planned Parenthood…will continue to receive funding at current levels. …after the deal was reached…, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi quickly put out celebratory statements. …“Overall, the compromise resembles more of an Obama administration-era budget than a Trump one,” Bloomberg reports. …Reuters: “While Republicans control the House, Senate and White House, Democrats scored … significant victories in the deal.” …Vox: “Conservatives got almost nothing they wanted.”

I guess you could call this a triumph of “public choice” over campaign rhetoric. Politicians did what’s in the best interest of politicians rather than what would be best for the nation.

I’m disappointed, as you might expect. But as I say in this interview, there are far more important battles. I’ll gladly accept a bit of pork and profligacy in the 2017 budget if that clears the decks for much-needed repeal of Obamacare and long-overdue reform of the tax code.

But here’s the catch. I don’t expect that these reforms will actually happen. Yes, the deck has been cleared, but I don’t think Republicans will take advantage of the opportunity.

The fundamental problem, which I pointed out in a different interview, is that there’s not a governing majority for smaller government. And that has some very grim implications.

Even more depressing, I point out that only Trump has the power to turn things around. Yet I see very little evidence that he, a) believes in smaller government, or b) is willing to expend any political capital to achieve smaller government.

To make matters worse, Republicans have convinced themselves that they lose the spin battle whenever there is a shutdown or some other high-stakes fiscal fight with Democrats.

For what it’s worth, I’m trying to remind Republicans that it is in their long-run political interests to do the right thing (as Reagan demonstrated). That’s why, in the first interview, I said they need to gut Obamacare and lower taxes if they want to do well in the 2018 and 2020 elections.

But don’t hold your breath waiting for the “stupid party” to behave intelligently.

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Republicans Can’t Be Trusted with Tax Reform

Fundamental tax reform such as a flat tax should accomplish three big goals.

• Lower tax rates in order to encourage more productive behavior.
• Get rid of double taxation in order to enable saving and investment.
• End distorting preferences in order to reduce economically irrational decisions.

The good news is that almost all Republicans believe in the first two goals and at least pay lip services to the third goal.

The bad news is that they nonetheless can’t be trusted with tax reform.

Here’s why. Major tax reform is based on the assumption that achieving the first two goals will lower tax revenue and achieving the third goal will generate tax revenue. A reform plan doesn’t have to be “revenue neutral,” of course, but politicians would be very reluctant to vote for a package that substantially reduced tax revenue. So serious proposals have revenue-raising provisions that are roughly similar in magnitude to the revenue-losing provisions.

Here’s the problem.   Notwithstanding lip service, Republicans are not willing to go after major tax loopholes like the healthcare exclusion. And that means that they are looking for other sources of revenue. In some cases, such as the proposal in the House plan to put debt and equity on a level playing field, they come up with decent ideas. In other cases, such as the border-adjustment tax, they come up with misguided ideas.

And some of them are even talking about very bad ideas, such as a value-added tax or carbon tax.

This is why it would be best to set aside tax reform and focus on a more limited agenda, such as a plan to lower the corporate tax rate. I discussed that idea a few weeks ago on Neil Cavuto’s show, and I echoed myself last week in another appearance on Fox Business.

Lest you think I’m being overly paranoid about Republicans doing the wrong thing, here’s what’s being reported in the establishment press.

The Hill is reporting that the Trump Administration is still undecided on the BAT.

The most controversial aspect of the House’s plan is its reliance on border adjustability to tax imports and exempt exports. …the White House has yet to fully embrace it. …If the administration opts against the border-adjustment proposal, it would have to find another way to raise revenue to pay for lowering tax rates.

While I hope the White House ultimately rejects the BAT, that won’t necessarily be good news if the Administration signs on to another new source of revenue.

And that’s apparently under discussion.

The Washington Post last week reported that the White House was looking at other ideas, including a value-added tax and a carbon tax… Even if administration officials are simply batting around ideas, it seems clear that Trump’s team is open to a different approach.

The Associated Press also tries to read the tea leaves and speculates whether the Trump Administration may try to cut or eliminate the Social Security payroll tax.

The administration’s first attempt to write legislation is in its early stages and the White House has kept much of it under wraps. But it has already sprouted the consideration of a series of unorthodox proposals including a drastic cut to the payroll tax, aimed at appealing to Democrats.

I’m not a big fan of fiddling with the payroll tax, and I definitely worry about making major changes.

Why? Because it’s quite likely politicians will replace it with a tax that is even worse.

This would require a new dedicated funding source for Social Security. The change, proposed by a GOP lobbyist with close ties to the Trump administration, would transform Brady’s plan on imports into something closer to a value-added tax by also eliminating the deduction of labor expenses. This would bring it in line with WTO rules and generate an additional $12 trillion over 10 years, according to budget estimates.

Last but not least, the New York Times has a story today on the latest machinations, and it appears that Republicans are no closer to a consensus today than they were the day Trump got inaugurated.

…it is becoming increasingly unlikely that there will be a simpler system, or even lower tax rates, this time next year. The Trump administration’s tax plan, promised in February, has yet to materialize; a House Republican plan has bogged down, taking as much fire from conservatives as liberals… Speaker Paul D. Ryan built a tax blueprint around a “border adjustment” tax… With no palpable support in the Senate, its prospects appear to be nearly dead. …The president’s own vision for a new tax system is muddled at best. In the past few months, he has called for taxing companies that move operations abroad, waffled on the border tax and, last week, called for a “reciprocal” tax that would match the import taxes other countries impose on the United States.

The report notes that Trump may have a personal reason to oppose one of the provisions of the House plan.

Perhaps the most consequential concern relates to a House Republican proposal to get rid of a rule that lets companies write off the interest they pay on loans — a move real estate developers and Mr. Trump vehemently oppose. Doing so would raise $1 trillion in revenue and reduce the appeal of one of Mr. Trump’s favorite business tools: debt.

From my perspective, the most encouraging part of the story is that the lack of consensus may lead Republicans to my position, which is simply to cut the corporate tax rate.

With little appetite for bipartisanship, many veterans of tax fights and lobbyists in Washington expect that Mr. Trump will ultimately embrace straight tax cuts, with some cleaning up of deductions, and call it a victory.

And I think that would be a victory as well, even though I ultimately want to junk the entire tax code and replace it with a flat tax.

P.S. In an ideal world, tax reform would be financed in large part with spending restraint. Sadly, Washington, DC, isn’t in the same galaxy as that ideal world.

P.P.S. To further explain why Republicans cannot be trusted, even if they mean well, recall that Rand Paul and Ted Cruz both included VATs in the tax plans they unveiled during the 2016 presidential campaign.

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Will Republicans Drain the Regulatory Swamp?

On major economic issues, it does not appear that Republican control of Washington makes much of a difference.

• Efforts to repeal Obamacare have bogged down because GOPers are willing to deal with the fiscal wreckage of that law, but don’t seem very comfortable about undoing the interventions and regulations that have caused premiums to skyrocket.
• Efforts to cut taxes and reform the tax code don’t look very promising because House Republicans have proposed a misguided border-adjustment tax and the White House seems hopelessly divided on how to proceed.
• Efforts to restrain government spending haven’t gotten off the ground. A full budget is due next month, but it’s not overly encouraging that Trump’s proposed domestic cuts would be used to expand the Pentagon’s budget.

Let’s see whether we get a different story when we examine regulatory issues.

We’ll start with some good news? Well, sort of. It seems the United States has the largest and 4th-largest GDPs in the world.

You may think that makes no sense, but this is where we have to share some bad news on the regulatory burden from the Mercatus Center.

Economic growth has been reduced by an average of 0.8 percent per year from 1980 to 2012 due to regulatory accumulation. Regulations force companies to invest less in activities that enhance productivity and growth, such as research and development, as companies must divert resources into regulatory compliance and similar activities. …Compared to a scenario where regulations are held constant at levels observed in 1980, the study finds that the difference between the economy we are in and a hypothetical economy where regulatory accumulation halted in 1980 is approximately $4 trillion. …The $4 trillion dollars in lost GDP associated with regulatory accumulation would be the fourth largest economy in the world—larger than major countries like Germany, France, and India.

By the way, this data from Mercatus gives me an opportunity to re-emphasize the importance of even small variations in economic growth. It may not make that much difference if the economy grows 0.8 percent faster or slower in one year.

But, as just noted, a loss of 0.8 percent annual growth over 32 years has been enormously expensive to the U.S. economy.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a depressing array of data on America’s regulatory burden. Here’s the chart that grabbed my attention.

And here’s a video on the burden of red tape from the folks at CEI.

Who deserves the blame for this nightmare of red tape?

The previous president definitely added to the regulatory morass. The Hill reported last year on a study by the American Action Forum.

The Obama administration issues an average of 81 major rules, those with an economic impact of at least $100 million, on a yearly basis, the study found. That’s about one major rule every four to five days, or, as the American Action Forum puts it, one rule for every three days that the federal government is open. “It is a $2,294 regulatory imposition on every person in the United States,” wrote Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the American Action Forum, who conducted the study.

And there was a big effort to add more red tape in Obama’s final days, as noted by Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal.

Since the election Mr. Obama has broken with all precedent by issuing rules that would be astonishing at any moment and are downright obnoxious at this point. This past week we learned of several sweeping new rules from the Interior Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, including regs on methane on public lands (cost: $2.4 billion); a new anti-coal rule related to streams ($1.2 billion) and renewable fuel standards ($1.5 billion).

As you might expect, the net cost of Obama’s regulatory excess is significant. Here’s some of what the Washington Examiner wrote during the waning days of Obama’s tenure.

According to new information from the White House, finally released after a two year wait, the total burden of federal government paperwork is more than 11.5 billion man-hours a year. That’s almost 500 million man-days, or 1.3 million man-years. More importantly, it’s 35 hours every person in the country (on average) has to spend doing federal paperwork every year, on average. …Time is money, and paperwork time alone costs the country almost $2 trillion a year, or about 11 percent of GDP.

But it’s not solely Obama’s fault. Not even close.

Both parties can be blamed for this mess, as reported by the Economist.

The call to cut red tape is now an emotive rallying cry for Republicans—more so, in the hearts of many congressmen, than slashing deficits. Deregulation will, they argue, unleash a “confident America” in which businesses thrive and wages soar, leaving economists, with their excuses for the “new normal” of low growth, red-faced. Are they right?

They may be right, but they never seem to take action when they’re in charge.

Between 1970 and 2008 the number of prescriptive words like “shall” or “must” in the code of federal regulations grew from 403,000 to nearly 963,000, or about 15,000 edicts a year… The unyielding growth of rules, then, has persisted through Republican and Democratic administrations… The endless pile-up of regulation enrages businessmen. One in five small firms say it is their biggest problem, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.

Though I would point out that President Reagan was the exception to this dismal rule.

That being said, who cares about finger pointing? What matters is that the economy is being stymied by excessive red tape.

So what can be done about this? President Trump has promised a 2-for-1 deal, saying that his Administration will wipe out two existing regulations for every new rule that gets imposed.

Susan Dudley opines on this proposal, noting that Trump hasn’t put any meat on the bones.

Like pebbles tossed in a stream, each individual regulation may do little economic harm, but eventually the pebbles accumulate and like a dam, may block economic growth and innovation. A policy of removing two regulations for every new one would provide agencies incentives to evaluate the costs and effectiveness of those accumulated regulations and determine which have outlived their usefulness. Mr. Trump’s statement doesn’t provide details on how this new policy would work.

Ms. Dudley points out, however, that other nations have achieved some success with similar-sounding approaches.

…his team could look to experiences in other countries for insights. The Netherlands, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom have all adopted similar requirements to offset the costs of new regulations by removing or modifying existing rules of comparable or greater effect. …The Netherlands program established a net quantitative burden reduction target that reduced regulatory burdens by 20% between 2003 and 2007. It is currently on track to save €2.5 billion in regulatory burden between 2012 and 2017 by tying the introduction of new regulations “to the revision or scrapping of existing rules.” Under Canada’s “One-for-One Rule,” launched in 2012, new regulatory changes that increase administrative burdens must be offset with equal burden reductions elsewhere. Further, for each new regulation that imposes administrative burden costs, cabinet ministers must remove at least one regulation. Similarly, Australia’s policy is that “the cost burden of new regulation must be fully offset by reductions in existing regulatory burden.” The British began with a “One-in, One-out” policy, requiring any increases in the cost of regulation to be offset by deregulatory measures of at least an equivalent value. In 2013, it moved to “One-in, Two-out” (OITO) and more recently to a “One-in, Three-out” policy in an effort to cut red tape by £10 billion.

The bottom line is that progress will depend on Trump appointing good people. And on that issue, the jury is still out.

The legislative branch also could get involved.

In a column for Reason, Senator Rand Paul explained that the REINS Act could make a big difference.

…13 of the 15 longest registers in American history have been authored by the past two presidential administrations (Barack Obama owns seven of the top eight, with George W. Bush filling in most of the rest)…federal lawmakers should pass something called the REINS Act—the “Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act. The REINS Act would require every new regulation that costs more than $100 million to be approved by Congress. As it is now, agencies can pass those rules unilaterally. Such major rules only account for about 3 percent of annual regulations, but they are the ones that cause the most headaches for individuals and businesses. …the REINS Act did pass the House on four occasions during the Obama administration. Lack of support in the Senate and the threat of a presidential veto kept it from ever reaching Obama’s desk.

But would it make a difference if Congress had to affirm major new rules?

Given how agencies will lie about regulatory burdens, it wouldn’t be a silver bullet.

But,based on the hysterical opposition from the left, I’m betting the REINS Act would be very helpful.

REINS would fundamentally alter the federal government in ways that could hobble federal agencies during periods when the same party controls Congress and the White House — and absolutely cripple those agencies during periods of divided government. Many federal laws delegate authority to agencies to work out the details of how to achieve relatively broad objectives set by the law itself. …REINS, however, effectively strips agencies of much of this authority.

That sounds like good news to me. If the crazies at Think Progress are this upset about the REINS Act, it must be a step in the right direction.

Let’s close with a bit of evidence that maybe, just maybe, Republicans will move the ball in the right direction. Here are some excerpts from a Bloomberg story.

The White House estimates it will save $10 billion over 20 years by having rescinded 11 Obama-era regulations under a relatively obscure 1996 law that lets Congress fast-track repeal legislation with a simple majority. …In all, the law has been used to repeal 11 rules, with two more awaiting the president’s signature… About two dozen measures with CRA’s targeting them remain, but because the law can only be used on rules issued in the final six months of the previous administration, Congress only has only a few more weeks to use the procedure.

Before getting too excited, remember that the annual cost of regulation is about $2 trillion and the White House is bragging about actions that will reduce red tape by $10 billion over two decades. Which means annual savings of only $500 million.

Which, if my math is right, addresses 0.025 percent of the problem.

I’ll take it, but it should be viewed as just a tiny first step on a very long journey.

P.S. The Congressional Review Act was signed into law by Bill Clinton. Yet another bit of evidence that he was a surprisingly pro-market President.

P.P.S. If you want some wonky analysis of regulation, I have some detailed columns here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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Time for Republicans to Pull the Plug on Border-Adjustable Tax Scheme

As part of an otherwise very good tax reform plan, House Republicans have proposed to modify the corporate income tax so that it becomes a “destination-based cash-flow tax.”

For those not familiar with wonky inside-the-beltway tax terminology, there are three main things to understand about this proposal.

• First, the tax rate on business would drop from 35 percent to 20 percent. This is unambiguously positive.
• Second, it would replace depreciation with expensing, which is a very desirable change that would eliminate a very counter-productive tax on new investment outlays. This is basically what makes the plan a “cash-flow” tax.
• Third, any income generated by exports would be exempt from tax but the 20-percent tax would be imposed on all imports. These “border-adjustable” provisions are what makes the plan a “destination-based” tax.

I’m a big fan of the first two provisions, but I’m very hostile to the third item.

I don’t like it because I worry it sets the stage for a value-added tax. I don’t like it because it is designed to undermine tax competition. I don’t like it because it has a protectionist stench and presumably violates America’s trade commitments. I don’t like it because that part of the plan only exists because politicians aren’t willing to engage in more spending restraint. And I don’t like it because politicians should try to reinvent the wheel when we already know the right way to do tax reform.

Heck, I feel like the Dr. Seuss character who lists all the ways he would not like green eggs and ham. Except I can state with complete certainty I wouldn’t change my mind if I was suddenly forced to take a bite of this new tax.

Today, I’m going to augment my economic arguments by noting that the plan also is turning into a political liability. Here are some excerpts from a news report in the Wall Street Journal about opposition in the business community.

A linchpin of the House Republicans’ tax plan, an approach called “border adjustment,” has split Republicans and fractured the business world into competing coalitions before a bill has even been drafted. …There is also global uncertainty: Other countries may retaliate, either by border-adjusting their corporate taxes or by challenging the U.S. plan at the World Trade Organization as too tilted toward American producers.

And The Hill reports that grassroots organizations also are up in arms.

Americans for Prosperity is stepping up its efforts to advocate against a proposal from House Republicans to tax imports and exempt exports, as lawmakers are increasingly raising concerns about the proposal. …AFP has hundreds of volunteers and staff who are making phone calls about the proposal. The group has about 100 meetings set up with Congress members and their staff for next week, while Congress is in recess.

Meanwhile, the Economist reports that the plan is causing uncertainty around the world.

To offset a border-adjusted tax of 20%—the rate favoured by House Republicans—the greenback would need to rise fully 25%, enough to destabilise emerging markets burdened with dollar-denominated debts. If the dollar stayed put and wages and prices rose 25% instead, the Federal Reserve would have to decide how to respond to an unprecedented surge in inflation. Why tolerate such disruption?

Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal has a devastating take on the issue.

Like a European value-added tax, its cost would be deeply hidden in the price of goods, thus easily jacked up over time. Also, compared with the current tax structure, businesses would see less incentive to move abroad in search of lower taxes, eroding a useful pressure on politicians to be fiscally sane. And because the tax would alter the terms of trade, it would be expected to lead to a sharp increase in the dollar. U.S. holders of foreign assets would suffer large paper losses. Since many foreigners borrow in dollars too, a global debt crisis might follow. The tax might also violate World Trade Organization rules, inviting other countries to impose punitive taxes on U.S. exports.

Last but not least, John Tamny outlines some of the political downsides at Real Clear Markets.

…the House of Representatives…is aggressively promoting a…tax on imports. …When we get up and go to work each day, our work is what we exchange for what we don’t have, including voluminous goods and services produced for us around the world.  …Party members are proudly seeking a tax on our work. …Only the “stupid” Party could come up with something so injurious to every American, to the American economy, and to its growth-focused brand.  But that’s where we are at the moment.  The Party that attained majorities with its tax cutting reputation is aggressively seeking to shed its growth brand through the introduction of tax hikes meant to give politicians even more of what we the people produce.  If so, the majority Party can kiss its majority goodbye.  It will have earned its minority status.

For what it’s worth, I think John overstates the case against the plan. The additional revenue from border-adjustable tax provision would be used to cut taxes elsewhere. Heck, the plan is actually a significant net tax cut.

But John is right when you look at the issue through a political lens. If the DBCFT actually began to move through the legislative process, opponents would start running commercials about the “GOP scheme to impose new consumption tax on Americans.” Journalists (most of whom dislike Republicans) would have a field day publicizing reports about the “GOP plan to raise average family tax bill by hundreds of dollars.”

Such charges would be ignoring the other side of the equation, of course, but that’s how politics works.

All of which brings me back to one of my original points. We already know that the flat tax is the gold standard of tax reform. And we already know the various ways of moving the tax code in that direction.

My advice is that Republicans abandon the border-adjustable provision and focus on lowering tax rates, reducing double taxation, and cutting back on loopholes. Such ideas are economically sounder and politically safer.

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Setting Aside Crassness and Bluster, Trump’s a Typical Big-Government Republican

Donald Trump is, to be charitable, a rather unique and colorful presidential candidate. He seems incapable of letting a day pass without doing something that makes the political establishment shudder with disdain.

Since I’m not a fan of the status quo in Washington, I have no objection to ruffling the feathers of DC insiders. That being said, it’s important to look at why Trump elicits such hostility.

• Is he upsetting the establishment because he intends to cut back on the pervasive nest-feathering and lucrative cronyism of Washington?
• Or is he upsetting the establishment simply by, well, being a jerk?

The bottom line is that the enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend.

In other words, my ideal candidate almost surely would be hated by the crowd in DC, but the hostility would be based on the candidate’s agenda to shrink the size and scope of the federal government, not because the candidate makes offensive and/or controversial statements.

Heck, I’d be willing to forgive a certain amount of distasteful behavior in a politician if that was the price of getting a genuine reformer. For what it’s worth, I’m even willing to tolerate a politician’s misbehavior if he simply allows good reform to happen, which is why I now have a certain after-the-fact fondness for Bill Clinton’s presidency.

As a policy wonk, I don’t spend much time wondering whether Trump is a good or stable person. I’m more focused on the policies he would push (or simply allow) if he wound up in the White House.

On that basis, I’m not brimming with optimism. Here’s some of what I wrote for the U.K.-based Guardian, when asked to share my assessment about the possible economic policy agenda of a Trump Administration. I start by saying we are in uncharted territory.

Normal presidential candidates put forth proposals that usually have been vetted by policy experts. They also generally have track records from their time as elected officials. …Trump is not a normal candidate.

I then point out that Trump is all over the map on policy.

…his views on major economic issues are eclectic. He promises a big tax cut, but it’s probably not very serious since he has no concomitant plan to restrain the growth of government spending. He threatens to impose steep tariffs, which would risk triggering a trade war, but he claims protectionism would merely be a stick to extort concessions from trading partners. ….He makes noises about potentially defaulting on debt but then pivots and says the debt can be financed by printing money. …either approach causes angst among most economists.

My conclusion (which is nothing more than a guess) is that the overall burden of government would increase with Trump in the White House.

With all this uncertainty about what Trump really believes, it’s impossible to guess which policies will change and how the economy would be impacted. For what it’s worth, libertarians generally fear that Trump ultimately would govern as a left-leaning populist.

By the way, this is also why I was not a fan of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, or Mitt Romney.

Simply stated, non-ideological Republicans (whether pseudo-populists like Trump or career politicians) don’t challenge the conventional wisdom of Washington. And that generally results in a go-along-to-get-along approach to policy, which means continued growth of government.

Which is why I’ve pointed out that Democrats in the White House sometimes result in less damage.

By the way, my jaundiced assessment of Trump does not imply that Hillary Clinton is any better. She also has personal foibles that – in a normal society – would disqualify her from holding public office.

And I also wrote for the Guardian about her approach to economic policy, which is basically the same direction as Bernie Sanders but at a slower pace.

…she would move public policy incrementally to the left. Some tax increases, but not giant tax increases. Some new regulations, but not complete government takeovers of industry. A bigger burden of government spending, but not turning America into Greece. An increase in the minimum wage, but not up to $15 an hour. More subsidies for higher education, but not an entitlement for everyone. And some restrictions on trade, but no sweeping reversal of the pro-trade consensus that has existed since the second world war.

In other words, become Greece at 55 miles per hour rather than Bernie’s desire to become Greece at 90 miles per hour.

P.S. Since our topic today is so depressing, let’s end with some humor.

We’ll start with this PG-13 pro-Gary Johnson comparison of the candidates.

This shows libertarians can be funny, even though I think it’s wrong to characterize Trump as being on the right (at least from an economic perspective).

Here’s an amusing comparison of a teenage boy and Donald Trump.

I’ll have to add this to my limited collection of Trump humor, most of which is at the bottom of this post.

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Masochism Exercise, Part II: Reviewing the Republican Platform

Yesterday, I shared some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the Democratic Party platform.

It wasn’t a fun task. The Democrats put together a rat’s nest of taxes, spending, cronyism, and red tape, so my blood pressure probably went crazy as I read the document. Crazy Bernie Sanders may have lost the war for the nomination, but it seems that he mostly won the battle over the platform.

The plank about letting states be in charge of marijuana policy was the only part of the platform that I actually liked (even though I personally disapprove of drug use).

Though it mostly doesn’t matter what’s in party platforms. As I pointed out yesterday, platforms tend to be ideological statements to please party activists. Politicians generally don’t care about their respective party platforms, and they definitely don’t allow their behavior to be constrained by platform language.

With that important caveat in mind, let’s now review the GOP platform. And I’ll use the same approach that I used when looking at the Democrat’s document. I’ll provide a short excerpt and then give my two cents.

Here are some of the main economic issues addressed (or bungled) by Republicans.

We believe the Constitution was written not as a flexible document, but as our enduring covenant.

That’s true, but why aren’t GOPers defunding most of the federal government if that’s what they really believe?

Because of the vital role of religious organizations, charities, and fraternal benevolent societies in fostering generosity and patriotism, they should not be subject to taxation and donations to them should remain deductible.

Endorsing the deduction for charitable contributions isn’t an optimistic sign for those of us who support fundamental tax reform.

To guard against hypertaxation of the American people in any restructuring of the federal tax system, any value added tax or national sales tax must be tied to the simultaneous repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment, which established the federal income tax.

This may be my favorite part of the GOP platform. Hopefully it will discourage Rand Paul and Ted Cruz from including a VAT if they run for president again and put forth tax reform plans.

We propose to level the international playing field by lowering the corporate tax rate to be on a par with, or below, the rates of other industrial nations.

Hard to argue with that plank, though it raises the question of why Republicans haven’t enacted this change already.

We endorse the recommendation of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, as well as the current Administration’s Export Council, to switch to a territorial system of taxation so that profits earned and taxed abroad may be repatriated for job-creating investment here at home.

Territorial taxation is good policy, so amen.

Republicans believe that no financial institution is too big to fail. We support legislation to ensure that the problems of any financial institution can be resolved through the Bankruptcy Code.

This is the right policy. Too bad many GOPers ignored this bit of wisdom and voted for TARP.

We propose to phase out the federal transit program.

They should phase out the entire Department of Transportation, but this would be a good start.

…we oppose a further increase in the federal gas tax.

That’s good, though repealing the tax would be even better.

Amtrak is an extremely expensive railroad for the American taxpayers, who must subsidize every ticket. The federal government should allow private ventures to provide passenger service in the northeast corridor.

All this sounds good, but it’s a bit vacuous. There should be an explicit commitment to end Amtrak subsidies.

We reaffirm our intention to end federal support for boondoggles like California’s high-speed train to nowhere.

A welcome commitment, though it should be extended to all transportation projects.

We should reduce the occupational licensing laws that shut untold millions of potential workers out of entrepreneurial careers.

This is largely a problem caused by state and local governments, but it’s nonetheless nice to see a statement of support for much-needed change.

We must overturn the regulatory nightmare, created by the Dodd-Frank law, for the community banks and savings and loans that provide nearly half of all small-business loans and over three-quarters of all agricultural loans.

Maybe I’m being paranoid, but where’s the language explicitly calling for repeal of the Dodd-Frank bailout bill?

The taxpayers spend an average of $35,000 a year per employee on non-cash benefits, triple the average non-cash compensation of the average worker in the private sector. Federal employees receive extraordinary pension benefits and vacation time wildly out of line with those of the private sector. We urge Congress to bring federal compensation and benefits in line with the standards of most American employees.

Federal bureaucrats are overcompensated, so it goes without saying (though I’m still glad they said it) that costs should be contained.

We must impose firm caps on future debt… A strong economy is one key to debt reduction, but spending restraint is a necessary component that must be vigorously pursued.

Capping debt is fine. Capping spending would be far better.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and the Foreign Bank and Asset Reporting Requirements result in government’s warrantless seizure of personal financial information without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. …FATCA not only allows “unreasonable search and seizures” but also threatens the ability of overseas Americans to lead normal lives. We call for its repeal and for a change to residency-based taxation for U.S. citizens overseas.

Unambiguous opposition to FATCA is great, but it’s also big news that the GOP wants territorial taxation for labor income.

We call on Congress and state legislatures to enact reforms to protect law-abiding citizens against abusive asset forfeiture tactics.

Civil asset forfeiture is abusive by definition. Repeal the laws entirely.

The Constitution gives the federal government very few powers, and they are specifically enumerated… In obedience to that principle, we condemn the current Administration’s unconstitutional expansion into areas beyond those specifically enumerated.

This is true, but it’s too bad Republicans aren’t serious about this plank.

We oppose any carbon tax.

Good. It’s never a good idea to give politicians a new source of tax revenue.

The Republican path to fiscal sanity and economic expansion begins with a constitutional requirement for a federal balanced budget.

At the risk of being repetitive, spending caps are better.

We support the following test: Is a particular expenditure within the constitutional scope of the federal government? If not, stop it. Has it been effective in the past and is it still absolutely necessary? If not, end it. Is it so important as to justify borrowing, especially foreign borrowing, to fund it? If not, kill it.

If GOPers were serious about this part of the platform, this would put them on record to abolish 90 percent of the federal government.

Impose no changes for persons 55 or older. Give others the option of traditional Medicare or transition to a premium-support model designed to strengthen patient choice, promote cost-saving competition among providers, and better guard against the fraud and abuse that now diverts billions of dollars every year away from patient care.

To their credit (and notwithstanding Trump’s unserious approach to the issue), Republicans still embrace the right type of Medicare reform.

We applaud the Republican governors and state legislators who have undertaken the hard work of modernizing Medicaid. We will give them a free hand to do so by block-granting the program without strings.

It’s also good to see support for the right kind of Medicaid reform.

…all options should be considered to preserve Social Security. As Republicans, we oppose tax increases and believe in the power of markets to create wealth and to help secure the future of our Social Security system.

This is vacuous language, though at least it provides an indirect endorsement of personal retirement accounts. Though I don’t want “all options” on the table since that could be construed to include tax hikes.

We support reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 which prohibits commercial banks from engaging in high-risk investment.

What?!? This is the most disappointing and economically illiterate part of the GOP platform.

…the Constitution gives [the federal government] no role in education.

True, so why don’t Republicans explicitly call for abolishing the Department of Education?

We agree with the four dissenting judges of the Supreme Court: “In our view, the entire Act before us is invalid in its entirety.” It must be removed and replaced with an approach based on genuine competition, patient choice, excellent care, wellness, and timely access to treatment.

Nice, though remember that repealing Obamacare is just the first step if you want a genuine market-based healthcare sector.

We propose to end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance and allow consumers to buy insurance across state lines.

I like the latter part about breaking down the government-imposed barriers to interstate commerce, but I worry the part about tax discrimination is so vague it could be used to expand tax preferences when the real goal should be to get rid of the healthcare exclusion.

The FDA has slowly but relentlessly changed into an agency that more and more puts the public health at risk by delaying, chilling, and killing the development of new devices, drugs and biologics that can promote our lives and our health.

This is correct, but it would be nice to see specific reforms.

We commend those states that have passed Right to Try legislation, allowing terminally ill patients the right to try investigational medicines not yet approved by the FDA. We urge Congress to pass federal legislation to give all Americans with terminal illnesses the right to try.

This is a very good idea. If I ever have a deadly illness, I’ll want the freedom to roll the dice in hopes a new medicine or procedure will work.

Two grave problems undermine the rule of law on the federal level: Over-criminalization and over-federalization. In the first case, Congress and federal agencies have increased the number of criminal offenses in the U.S. Code from 3,000 in the early 1980s to more than 4,500 today. That does not include an estimated 300,000 regulations containing criminal penalties. …We urge Congress to codify the Common Law’s Rule of Lenity, which requires courts to interpret unclear statutes in favor of a defendant.

If bigwigs like Hillary Clinton can get away with violating very clear-cut national security laws because she didn’t intend to do damage to the nation, then ordinary people surely should get the benefit of the doubt as well when they inadvertently violate some complicated law or regulation.

…we oppose any form of Global Tax.

Amen. Now let’s see if Republicans put our money where their mouths are and defund pro-tax international bureaucracies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Let’s wrap this up. There are more policies that could be addressed, but this column already is too long.

The bottom line is that the platform has many good policies. Heck, if I though GOP politicians actually planned to pursue the agenda outlined in the document, I might consider becoming a Republican.

But does anybody think the average Republican politician even knows what is in the GOP platform? More importantly, does anyone think that Donald Trump has any commitment to the policies in the platform?

So now perhaps you can understand why advocates of small government sympathize with Uncle Sam in this cartoon.

Is it Tweedledee and Tweedledum, or the other way around?

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Playboy’s Amusing – and Accurate – Assessment of Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians

I will always have fond feelings for Playboy, though not for the stereotypical reason.

My appreciation for the magazine is largely based on the fact that I got a very nice honorarium from the German version back in the 1990s for writing an assessment of Bill Clinton’s likely approach to economic policy (confession: he turned out to be much better than I predicted).

Unfortunately, I’ve forgotten almost all of the German I learned in high school, so I can’t read the translated version of the article that appeared in the magazine.

Now Playboy has done something else that I appreciate, putting together a very clever matrix showing what Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens think about various policy issues.

It’s obviously satire, but it’s very clever and effective because it does a good job of capturing stereotypes from each group (just like this poster showing 24 types of libertarians).

As you can see, the “libertarian chicken” obviously provided the answers for the third column.

In addition to mind-your-own-business Libertarians, Playboy gives us abortion-über-alles Democrats, elitist Republicans, and fuzzy-headed Greens. A bit of truth in all those caricatures.

So kudos to them for mocking all parties equally. Comedy Central probably wouldn’t be losing so many viewers if it also took this even-handed approach.

P.S. If you like libertarian-oriented humor (both pro and con), then click here and here.

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