Now he tells us. David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget under Ronald Reagan, basically repudiated Reaganomics on NPR yesterday. Here is the money quote, from the end of the interview:
The economy is weak because of our irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies over the last 10, 20 or even 30 years. [emphasis mine.] And it's going to keep getting weaker unless we face up to the problem. So, yes, it's the chicken and egg. If we cut spending and raise taxes, it may slow down the economy even more, but that's unfortunately the choice that we face.
Thirty years? What happened thirty years ago? Oh, yeah, Ronald Reagan was elected president in a landslide and quickly put in place a policy of tax cuts for the wealthy while simultaneously cutting the social safety net for everyone else.
Well, apparently in the meantime Stockman has seen the light, at least somewhat, because he has nothing nice to say about the Bush era tax cuts.
We couldn't afford the Bush tax cuts when they were put in in 2001, 2003. Now, we're - eight years later, we're trillions in additional debt later, we're two unfinanced wars later, we're a trillion dollars of stimulus spending later, 800 billion of TARP, so it's pretty obvious if we couldn't afford them back then, in no way, shape or form can we even dream about affording them now.
I don't necessarily agree with everything else Stockman says in the interview. He is now claiming that we need to raise taxes on everyone, including the middle class, in order to get the deficit down to a manageable level (personally, I think we could tax the wealthy even more, but of course that is just unthinkable, because they wouldn't like that, and we have to keep the Richie Riches happy.)
The entire piece includes interviews with economists from various perspectives speaking about the Republicans "Pledge to America" and is worth clicking on the link and checking out.