Hey Kamala! Where Are Your Spending Cuts?

Stephen Moore on Sep 10, 2024

In 1982 the federal budget deficit rose above $100 billion for the first time (those were the good old days!), and then-President Ronald Reagan agreed to an infamous budget deal with then-House Speaker Tip O'Neill. Democrats would agree to $3 of spending cuts for every $1 of tax increases. Reagan foolishly agreed to the deal. The taxes went up. The spending cuts never materialized.

Reagan used to fume for the rest of his presidency, "I'm still waiting for those $3 of spending cuts."

Back then Democrats at least pretended they would cut spending. Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis pledged in 1988 that he would "only raise taxes as a last resort."

My, how times have changed. Now we have red ink multiple times higher than back then, with the Biden-Kamala baseline forecast calling for $2 trillion in deficits from now until kingdom come. The Democrats are entirely untroubled by the forecast and act as though the federal credit card has no limit.

Well, if Vice President Kamala Harris wins the election, we will put that risky proposition to the test.

Because in the wake of the largest amounts of red ink in American history, Harris has proposed zero reductions in federal spending. That's right: not a single penny.

I've thoroughly searched through every Harris campaign document and declaration on the economy and the budget but haven't discovered even one program, out of the thousands of line-item agencies in the budget, that she would shutter or terminate.

With Harris, it's big government everlasting.

The plan is $4.6 trillion in new taxes, as reported by The New York Times, to go with zero spending cuts. That means the ratio of taxes to spending cuts is infinity to one.

Republicans are hardly blameless in the ocean of red ink. But at least former President Donald Trump has proposed a presidential commission to identify ways to cut hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud, theft, duplication and inefficiency in federal programs. This commission, to be headed by Elon Musk, is a brilliant idea.

Democrats have greeted the idea with contempt. Their tolerance of government waste and fraud reminds me of the famous Jack Nicholson line in the movie "A Few Good Men": "You don't WANT to know the truth." Democrats don't want to expose the government corruption and inefficiency.

Harris' only ideas for cutting the budget are gimmicks like Medicare price controls or revoking patents to lower costs. These are likely to hurt the economy more than help.

Now we are hearing from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street analysts that Harris will be better for reducing debt than Trump. They seem to agree that a $4.6 trillion tax increase on business and investors is just what the doctor ordered.

Have they told their clients that?

Give Harris credit. She isn't disguising her master plan: the biggest tax and spend binge in American history. I just hope voters are paying attention.

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Stephen Moore is a cofounder of Unleash Prosperity. He is also an economic advisor to the Trump campaign. His new book, "The Trump Economic Miracle," coauthored with Arthur Laffer, will be released later this month.