Why Republicans Fell in Love With Tax Cuts
A new book proposes the shocking explanation that maybe it was just because they wanted to get elected.
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Since 1980, tax cuts have been the chief economic policy offering of the national Republican Party. Why is that?
Republican politicians and some economists will tell you that it’s just smart economics: Cutting taxes brings faster growth. This is surely true in some cases, but on the whole, economic growth has been slower since the first great Republican-led tax cut in 1981 than it was in preceding decades. There are non-tax-related reasons for that growth slowdown, and there have been lots of tax hikes as well as cuts since 1981. But it’s fair to say that the economic evidence on whether tax cuts spur sustained increases in growth is pretty mixed.