Saturday, July 14, 2012

Econ 101

The merry crew over at Trifecta have a video up describing how they think the Dems would react to a President Romney and presumably a republican congress energizing the economy and producing 6% growth. The metaphor used was a clip of a woman who looks too much like Nancy Pelosi riding in a race car, starting out terrified, but ending up liking it.

Folks, this has happened before, and it's been thoroughly documented. Reagan took office following the Carter malaise, and proposed tax cuts to energize the economy. Mr Reagan never did have a Republican Senate, and only had the house for the first two years of his presidency. All the tax cuts passed in the first year had to be phased in over two years so as not to upset any apple carts.

I remember those two years, with no one willing to do anything until the full measure of the cuts arrived, then the economy took off like the proverbial scalded cat.

In spite of this Reagan never did capture the Senate, and quickly lost the house to the Dems who were terrified of offending the Russians with the Reagan defense buildup. With the rapidly expanding economy came rapidly expanding tax revenues even with the cuts in place, and Dems being Dems, spending bills routinely came to 125% of income. The resulting deficits were blamed on Republicans, which was fair, as had Reagan not signed the bills, they might not have overspent as much.

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