As the Senate and Congress ready themselves for a debate over tax reform, Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writes that the policymakers should ignore the shouting of class warriors and, like Reagan, focus on the entire economy. Faster economic growth is the best solution to the problems of everyone in the economy. Mitchell writes:
Reagan’s tax policy (especially the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981) was good because the President and his team ignored the class-warfare crowd. They didn’t care whether all income groups got the same degree of tax relief. They didn’t care about static distribution tables. They didn’t care about complaints that “the rich” benefited.
They simply wanted to reduce the onerous barriers that the tax system imposed on the economy. They understood – and this is critically important – that faster growth was the best way to help everyone in America, including the less fortunate.
Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal thinks that Donald Trump may be taking the same approach. Her column today basically argues that the President is making a supply-side case for growth. She starts by taking a shot at self-styled “reform conservatives.”
In May 2014, a broad collection of thinkers and politicians gathered in Washington to celebrate a new conservative “manifesto.” The document called for replacing stodgy old Reaganite economics with warmer, fuzzier handouts to the middle class.
She’s happy Trump isn’t following their advice (and I largely agree).
Donald Trump must have missed the memo. …Mr. Trump wants to make Reagan-style tax reform great again.
Read more here.