A government report released earlier this week confirmed that the American economy will see a recession in 2008. Families across the country are facing foreclosure on their homes, and the dollar is at record lows.  In an article in The Chronicle Review, David Glenn asks why presidential candidates, especially Republicans, still propose tax cuts based on the now-debunked supply-side economic theory:

The hopes of the supply-side theorists of the 1970s, who proposed that revenue would often rise after tax cuts, have been thoroughly dashed by the last 30 years. Federal revenue fell after Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and again after George W. Bush's 2001 cuts. The vast majority of economists now say that tax cuts must be matched by spending cuts, or deficits will ensue.

For an answer, he turns to The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics, released this week by Stanford University Press. Author Isaac William Martin argues that “Republican political leaders (falsely but successfully) interpreted Proposition 13's success in California in 1978 as a broad mandate for cutting income taxes as well as property taxes,” a policy that has shaped and symbolized the party every since.

Martin’s showcasing of how the Republican Party came to so deeply associate itself with tax cuts helps us understand why President Bush stands so firmly by his economic policies in the face of economic upheaval. 

Comments

[Marc Goldstone, Chairman Arizona Tax Revolt]

I will have to read this book. Isn't it interesting that the Arizona Tax Revolt is lead and supported by BOTH Republicans and Democrats. What we are fighting for is a property taxation system where inflated valuations will no longer determine government revenue and spending.

The battleground isn't Republicans vs. Democrats anymore it is the Citizens against their Government which has a serious addiction to spending beyond our ability to fund it. They are debt junkies and they have left us to pick up the tab.

What we are proposing in the form of a Property Tax Levy and Valuation rollback would be useful in all states except those that are on an acquisition basis like Prop 13 since under those systems the tax burden has shifted to the new buyers. But for Arizona what we propose will keep property taxes predictable and affordable for all property owners in the present and future.

Learn more at http://www.ArizonaTaxRevolt.org

Marc Goldstone, Chair.
Arizona Tax Revolt