Quote Originally Posted by Alan View Post

To say that the FY '09 budget was "the property of George W. Bush" is one the the most blatant, and oft repeated lies I've seen in a long time.
"Starving the beast" is a well-known Republican strategy, and results in budget deficits and other economic turmoil, at the expense of other programs. I remember Bush 43s first State-of-the-Union address. It was packed with all kinds of programs, like No Child Left Behind, etc. etc. He kept saying, "And we're going to spend money on this, and we're going to spend money on this." And that's not even counting the Iraq war expenses... And then there were the tax cuts.. didn't add up to me.

So I was wondering how a Republican could come up with such a huge laundry list of new programs AND cut taxes simultaneously, when I read about the starve the beast concept. It was clearly what he was doing. Risky business if you ask me, and who exactly profits?

http://www.forbes.com/2010/05/06/tax...-bartlett.html


ETA this Wikipedia quote:
Empirical evidence shows that Starve the Beast may be counterproductive, with lower taxes actually corresponding to higher spending.
That has been my observation having lived through Eisenhower through Obama administrations