Brooks wishes away the supply-siders

David Brooks claims today that "continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy" due to the fiscal gap:

Supply-side economics had a good run, but continual tax cuts can no longer be the centerpiece of Republican economic policy. The demographics have changed. The U.S. is an aging society. We have made expensive promises to our seniors. We can’t keep those promises at the current tax levels, let alone at reduced ones. As David Frum writes in “Comeback,” his indispensable new book: “In the face of such a huge fiscal gap, the days of broad, across-the-board, middle-class tax cutting are over.”

As a result, he claims "Republican economic policies are shifting" and "Republicans are adjusting their priorities to win back the anxious middle class."

While there are a few encouraging signs of movement away from a near-exclusive focus on tax cuts, as he notes, Brooks never addresses the elephant in the room -- the fact that almost all of the Republican presidential candidates claim that tax cuts increase revenue (a claim that even Bush administration economists disavow). As a result, it's hard to imagine the GOP acknowledging the inevitable tradeoff between tax cuts and closing the long-run fiscal gap any time soon.

Comments

[Howard]

The funny line here is "Republicans are adjusting their priorities to win back the anxious middle class." It shows you how inauthentic the Republican Party is (to use a term Carl Rove likes to aim against whichever Democrat candidate is doing well at the time).

The NEW entitlement programs that Brooks outlines are just the type of Democratic proposals that Republicans have lambasted in the past (say, three months ago). So, according to Brooks, after giving so much back to the upper class, Republicans apparently now feel that the middle class has turned away from them.

In a few short years we will probably see this type of Republican transition with the issues of global warming, conservation and the environment. Reality trumps spin and partisan posturing eventually, but when it does the actors rarely (if ever) say they were wrong in the past.

As with changes to the environment (from high levels of carbon emissions, for example), correcting for past deficit spending will probably be more painful than avoiding (or preventing) it would have been originally.