Ramesh Ponnuru, a leading thinker on the right, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that is worth reading. He argues that Republicans “slavishly adhere to the economic program that Reagan developed to meet the challenges of the late 1970s and early 1980s, ignoring the fact that he largely overcame those challenges, and now we have new ones.”
Ponnuru provides examples; including pointing out that the top tax rate when Reagan took office was 70 percent v. 35 percent for most of the last decade. (The payroll tax is larger than the income tax for most people.) He also points out Reagan inherited an economy in which inflation was in double digits v. just two percent over the last five years. The conditions we face in 2013 are, as one would expect, quite a bit different than what Reagan faced more than three decades ago.
In the March issue of COMMENTARY, Michael Gerson and I offer a similar argument, saying:
And it is no wonder that Republican policies can seem stale; they are very nearly identical to those offered up by the party more than 30 years ago. For Republicans to design an agenda that applies to the conditions of 1980 is as if Ronald Reagan designed his agenda for conditions that existed in the Truman years.
To be clear: Reasonable tax rates and sound monetary policy remain important economic commitments. But America now confronts a series of challenges that have to do with globalization, stagnant wages, the loss of blue-collar jobs, exploding health-care and college costs, and the collapse of the culture of marriage.
Ponnuru in his op-ed, and Gerson and I in our essay, offer up policies that we believe address the issues facing America in the 21st century. People can read both pieces and judge the merits of our recommendations. But I want to make two other points.
The first is that there is an intellectual unfreezing that is taking place within the Republican Party that is all to the good. People from different parts of the party and who represent different strands within conservatism are offering up ideas for what needs to be done. Not all of them are wise, of course, but competing ideas need to be heard. Fortunately the impulse to attack people as heretics who should be expelled from the party is for the most part being held in check. That’s not true of everyone, of course. Some people are temperamentally attracted to an auto-da-fe. But it seems to me that in general there’s a real openness on the part of Republican lawmakers and conservatives to recalibration.
The second point is that Reagan himself was a fairly creative policy entrepreneur in his own right. He advanced what was essentially a new economic theory, supply side economics, and replaced détente and containment with a strategy of rolling back the Soviet empire.
Those approaches are well known and seem obvious now, but at the time they were unorthodox and controversial. It was Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan who in 1980 confessed, “Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas.”
Ronald Reagan adjusted his policies to meet the challenges of his time, and two generations after Reagan, Republicans and conservatives need to do the same thing.
Let the recalibration and rethinking continue.
Comparing pre-Reagan top marginal tax rates with the current tax code is like comparing pomegranates with wagon wheels: there is no comparison. There were numerous deductions and loopholes in the old tax code that no longer exist for higher income earners. That the liberal left persists in making these false comparisons is a problem. That so-called conservatives like Ponnuru, Wehner et al. make them is nothing less than an attack on the Reagan legacy.
Maybe so. But Reagan never balanced a budget and when the Republicans controlled everything During Bush 2, they were not that fiscally responsible either. Gingrich was the only true fiscal hawk. Unfortunately, Clinton got the credit, largely because the Republicans were intent on destroying him. If they decided on censure instead of impeachment for Lewinsky, he never would have become so popular. n nBottom line. I think there is a case for some tax increase, but for everyone, not just the "rich", if it is accompanied by an enforceable downsizing of all departments of government, staring with an federal immediate hiring and salary freeze. Plus lower pensions for all new hires once there is light at the end of the tunnel on government expenditure.
Fair point. I am all for having a well-informed and reasoned debate about where we go from here with the tax code.
But, please, let’s avoid the specious “true lies” such as the 70% figure Mr. Wehner cites (or the 90% figure we keep hearing from the Left about the Eisenhower era).
"Reagan never balanced a budget" n nI doubt that that is a fair statement. No matter how much Reagan tried to reign in the government's spending, Tip O'Neill always pronounced Reagan's budgets DOA while slapping his thighs, and then proceeded to pass a much more prodigal budget and forced Reagan to sign it. And also remember, after Nixon tried to limit, or to simply not spend, money allocated for certain programs, [Democratic] Congress passed a law making it mandatory that the President spend allocated funds. I am not sure that law is still on the books, but with Obama in the White House, what difference does it make?
Read David Stockman's "The Triumph of Politics; Why the Reagan Revolution Failed". In it stockman has chapter and verse about how Republicans were as unenthusiastic about budget cuts as Democrats.
“Republicans were as unenthusiastic about budget cuts as Democrats.” n nWell, that does not surprise me. However, would you mind saving me and others here the time and trouble of researching Mr. Stockman’s book, and tell us this concerning the Republicans who “were as unenthusiastic about budget cuts as Democrats” ? Were those the typical RINO spending whores of Capital Hill, or Reagan himself? n nIt is my impression that Reagan wanted and tried to reduce the government’s spending; but to do so he was not about to sacrifice his “Star Wars” programs, which eventually yielded the desired result of bringing the Cold War to an end. n
See, what Gerson et al. forget is this bon mot from the Obama campaign: "Government is the only thing we all belong to!" In forgetting that, they forget what was truly important in 2012. n nGot that? There was a time, not so long ago either, when such a proposition would be greeted with gales of laughter. Not anymore. No sir! The majority of the country now applauds such poppycock. The delusion didn't arise overnight, nor is it likely it will be undone in our lifetime, and most definitely not by the measures advocated by Mr. Gerson or by Ramesh Ponnuru. The policy alterations they recommend in aid of repairing the Republican Party (save one) neither alter current Republican policy nor are to be recommended. Each bromide (save one) is or has been Republican policy for just about ever. The exception is anthropogenic-global-warming (AGW) accommodation, which is definitely not, nor hopefully will it ever be, a Republican plank. If Gregg Easterbrook believes what they imply he does—the language they use is so bland and anodyne that it's difficult to say—then Gregg Easterbrook is an a**. n nSo gentlemen, including Mr. Wehner, please turn off your engines. The race is over as far as you're concerned. You offer nothing that is either worthwhile, innovative, or appropriate to the crisis, which crisis, again, is the scarifying degree to which our citizens believe that "Government is the only thing we all belong to"; a notion that is metaphysical. Therefore the crisis is metaphysical. Such problems are not addressed by impersonating Democrats. Standing before the mirror, alà six-year-old girls, applying mommy's lipstick, mascara, and eyeliner and giggling the while in an attempt to look more like mommy is, well, simultaneously adorable and pathetic. [HINT: thinking cap required; "mommy" is a metaphor here.] n nNow how did all that happen, that degradation of American culture, that myopia appropriate to Mr. Magoo or, perhaps, to someone suffering delerium tremens, in which the Federal government appears to be one's family? It's complicated, but the preferences of our younger generation are instructive. Eighteen-to-24 year olds have always been borderline political imbeciles but could usually be depended on to outgrow the malady. Not anymore. Nor did it matter much what they thought since so blessedly few of them bothered to vote. Not anymore. Like Nikola Tesla turning to alternating current to transmit electrical power over long distances, David Axelrod finally figured out how to get a surprising amount of that stupidity to the polls. It's plain as paint: in the last election, the Democrats unleashed the awesome potential for shallowness and insipidity of Facebook Nation, an achievement not to be underestimated since it was very much like distracting a vast herd of cattle from their mangers long enough to moo in unison. The trick is likely to work for some time in the future. n nIn sum, not one of the recommendations of Wehner and the rest, if adopted by the Republican Party, would have an effect equal to simply raising the voting age, not remotely. n nThe template for "Government is the only thing we all belong to" was sketched out for us with prescience and pinpoint clarity as long ago as 1932—not, as you may suppose, by George Orwell in "1984," a future so grotesquely sinister that it was a mere caricature to Americans, but by Aldous Huxley in "Brave New World." Here follow a few lines from a tape-recorded message softly playing in a dormitory where 80 very young children are sleeping: n n"Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas." n nAnd how about: n n"The Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows. 'They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson.' Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too—all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides—is made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!'" n nAnd who can forget: n n"Every one works for every one else." n nOr, with the explicit aim of encouraging sexual promiscuity: n n"Every one belongs to every one else." n nFinally: n n"The World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY." n nA future like that is disturbingly close, and it begs all the important questions. If "we" are the brothers and sisters in the "family," who is the father? Who the mother? Where is home? n(cont.)
(cont.) Of course it is insane to pursue policies that cripple the actually existing family's ability to raise the next generation without let or hindrance from the government on behalf of a piece of collectivist fiction called the "human family." But that is the trajectory we are on. The authors cited by Mr. Wehner offer nothing but weak tea as a cure for social cholera. Republicans, we read, must "encourage," must "support," must "strengthen" the family, as though such goals have been the farthest thing from anyone in the GOP's mind for decades. The encouraging, supporting, and vapid so-forth-ery is to be accomplished via the Federal government by a new and with-it Republican Party, which might seem more than puzzling to some. n nCompared with such puerile daydreams, Obama's "Life of Julia" is as hardbitten and brutally realistic as Hubert Selby's "Last Exit to Brooklyn."
The size of government was during Reagan and even more now is the number one domestic issue. The prime example of this is ObamaCare, but there are many other examples. Taxes are what allow government to grow in size. Thus, despite what RINOs like Peter Wehner say, taxes are still a huge issue.
I gave you one thumb up. n nI would give you twenty thumbs up, the site software wont allow it.
Thank you! Glad to know there are others who agree, though seemingly fewer these days . . .
Taxes are not what allows government to grow in size. When we pay taxes, we feel how much government really costs. In thirty years of tax cuts, government has not shrunk one whit. Paradoxically, the conservative ethos of self-reliance and personal responsibility, has created a country in which no-one feels responsible for the size of government, or the debt.