Hi gang,
  I stumbled upon this quaint little story in the LA Times this week and I had to share. Do we all remeber the 2000 election and Dubya proclaiming we had to cut income taxes because we were running a surplus, and thats the peoples' money, and it should get returned (this is before the extremely mild recession of Dec 2000 until march 2001, when the tax cuts were needed to boost the economy). And the reason we needed to cut taxes was because if we didn't cut, then the government would raise spending levels.

  Well, here's the report from William Niskanen, chairman of the fervently anti-government Cato Institute. ANd he "did a calculation showing that, since 1981, every $1 in tax cuts tends to produce 15 cents of extra spending. Likewise, every $1 of tax hikes tends to reduce spending by 15 cents. The notion that tax cuts cause spending to dry up, or that tax hikes encourage more spending, is not just wrong, it's completely backward."

  So, like everything else any conservative has ever said, the bedrock of their voodoo economics is statiscally, and factually false. The premise of the arguement is wrong, ERGO their whole plan is FUBAR from step one.

  Now we can speculate as to why this is. I think the most likely explanation is that of political pandering (pandering is my basic political theory that politicians in democracies are always trying to "buy" votes.):

1 by Democrats, when they try to balanace the budget by raising taxes feel they have to inflict some pain on their constituents also, by lowering spending.

2 by Republicans, when they try to sell a tax cut, they need to buy middle class voters with tuition tax credits, school programs, money for food stamps, raising spending.

Back to the Jon Chait article

  "They're theologically committed to tax cuts and don't really care about spending cuts. They studiously ignore any evidence that weakens their case — which is to say, most of the evidence."

  "So, basically, you have a handful of supply-siders leading the rest of the conservatives around by the nose. The conservatives could cut a deal with the Democrats to tighten spending and taxes, but the anti-tax nuts are the ones who set policy for the movement."

  "It's funny. Almost all the conservatives, including Goldberg, are furious at Bush for raising spending. But it hasn't occurred to them to question the dogma of the voodoo economists who led them into this mess in the first place."