Greenspan’s Disillusionment
posted by Frank Pasquale
With terrific market timing, Alan Greenspan has released a memoir (entitled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World
But Greenspan had some evidence of those trends even before Bush took office. Consider this statistic from Jonathan Chait’s new book, The Big Con
In 1995, the last year of Democratic control, the federal government spent an average of $35 million more in Democratic house districts than in Republican districts. (This isn’t surprising, since Democrats represent most of the poor districts that benefit from Medicaid, food stamps, and the like.). By 2001, the government was spending an average of $612 million more in Republican districts. Dick Armey, the former House Majority leader, justified this massive transfer of wealth: “To the victor go the spoils.” (p. 74, emphasis added)
I’ll be looking forward to seeing whether Greenspan’s book acknowledges his role in supporting the tax cuts that may have accelerated this dynamic. As Cato Institute star William Niskanen has argued, such cuts do more to “stoke” than “starve” the “beast” of government spending. The libertarian Niskanen suggests that “a tax increase may be the most effective policy to reduce the relative level of federal spending.”
September 17, 2007 at 7:14 am
Posted in: Politics
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