The Free Market Low Tax Fairy Tale

I agree with Mike's points regarding the Arthur C. Brooks article but would like to extend with my own viewpoint regarding what I think is the main theme of the article.  As I read it Brooks is basically calling for conservatives to go back to their "roots" of advocating low tax free market capitalism and reducing the debt.  My main issue with this argument is that this conservative mantra has never been a reality.

As Mike's line graph so beautifully demonstrates, in peacetime republican presidents have actually increased the debt much more than any of the tax and spend liberal presidents of the past.  The reason is simple.  Republican presidents such as Bushx2 and Reagan are able to pass through their tax cuts but then when it comes to the "cut spending" part of the equation things inevitably fall apart.   Both Reagan and Bush significantly increased defense spending on projects such as star wars and were never able to significantly reduce other spending programs.  Tax revenues then fall or stay the same while spending continues to increase and as a result we see the increased debts.

Now the typical conservative response is "well it was the democratic Congress that kept spending all that money" but the truth of the matter is that Republican presidents never REALLY advocated any spending cuts.  Sure they propose minor cuts of "pork barrel" spending which are popular but when it comes to cuts that would be real and painful such as social security or medicare no measures are really taken.  It was a democratic congress which forced Reagan to pay for social security with some increased taxes and even with a republican congress Bush #2 never made any significant spending cuts.

Brooks also appeals to poll after poll which he says supports the fact that people want more capitalism and free market policies.  My response would simply be that the polls really mean very little because the terms "capitalism" and "free market" really have no meat behind them. Ask people if they would chose capitalism over socialism and they absolutely would prefer capitalism but ask them if they want government to provide universal health care and 66% will say yes.  Now government providing health care is undoubtedly a "socialist" policy especially if you consult conservative TV ads and yet Americans favor it.  Republicans and conservatives, along with an entire cold war era, convinced most Americans that socialism equals a Soviet style command and control economy and it is therefore understandable why most would chose capitalism.  In reality though many Americans favor "socialist" type policy like the progressive tax, social security, and universal health care most likely because they don't associate those policies as being truly "socialist" even though they really are.

In the end I just wish we could truly debate the debt with some sort of realism.  At least Obama admits he will have a tremendous deficit and proposes to start doing something unpopular in the future (raising taxes) to try to fix it.  Conservatives come with the same fairy tale of "we can lower taxes and cut spending and lower the debt" but history has shown that never really works out.  The taxes do get lowered but the spending stays the same and the debt goes through the roof.  If a republican came with a real plan such as cutting social security or medicare I would respect that plan more because at least it would be realistic; even with me being a strong supporter of social security and government provided health care.