We Now Have PROOF That Trickle Down Economics Don’t Work — Where Is Fox News?

Reagan’s Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Were The Biggest Political Scam In The History of The United States

The Republican theory that tax cuts for the wealthy (better known as “Reaganomics”) will trickle down to us mere minions has been a failure. All that has resulted from it is “wealth inequality” and deficits.

Tax Cuts
Image from Business Insider.

After 35 years of failure, you would think the 2016 Republican presidential field would try something new in terms of the party’s economic approach. Instead, it’s the same old played-out tune of Reaganomics. Tax cuts for the wealthy will “trickle down” to the middle-class. The only result from Reagan’s trickle-down economics has been the destruction of the American middle-class, grotesque wealth inequality, and huge deficits.

The implementation of Reagan’s trickle down theory ended the era of FDR’s “New Deal” and set up an environment of never ending deficits for our nation. The failure of this economic theory and all its side-effects came to a head in 2008 financial crisis under Republican President George W. Bush.

Statistics have shown that the gap between rich and poor has grown unabated since the early 1980s when Reagan took office. While Reagan was advocating smaller government to his supporters with his rhetoric, he increased government while in office. This former grade B actor should have gotten an Emmy for his performance.

Then there is the human factor in all of this voodoo economics tom-foolery. No one wants to admit they were wrong. Reagan and the Republican Party were wrong about supply-side economics trickling down to the rest of us. Moreover, there are many examples to prove it.

Example after example shows how Republican ideology fails not just in the social arena but in the financial realm as well. In 2010, Kansas voted Republican Sam Brownback as its governor. He got right to work cutting taxes. One of the biggest realities the Republican Party and its adherents tend to overlook is that when you cut taxe, “taxes get cut.” Subsequently, revenues could not keep up with expenses, which will create a shortfall of about $900 million by the fiscal year 2019.

This action by the so-called Tea Party favorite got the state’s credit rating downgraded by Moody’s Investment Services, which stated that the state’s tax plan was the primary reason for the decline.

In 2010, Republican Governor Chris Christie took over in the state of New Jersey. One of the first things Christie did once in office was to cut taxes. Once again, seemly shocked to realize that by cutting taxes you cut revenue, the state had a whopping $807 million revenue shortfall. The State of New Jersey’s economy is in the tank.

These are not isolated occurrences. In 2010, North Carolina elected Republican Pat McCrory to be governor of that state. In step with his Republican ideology, he gave the wealthy a tax cut that in turn destroyed the state’s budget. These tax cuts are expected to create a deficit to the tune of $445 million. Once again, it’s like a recurring nightmare that will not go away.

Tax cuts wreck economies, slow down growth, and wipe out job creation. In fact, as we reported back last year in a Liberal America article, McCrory raised taxes on the poor and middle-class in an attempt to soften the blow, which in practice gave many of the very people who voted for him in that state a tax hike.

What were the reasons for these failures? According to these governors, it was Obama’s fault. Right, blame it on the black guy.

While these Republican Governors were busy blaming Obama for their failures, President Obama and his team were busy fixing the problems created by this failed economic theory of trickle-down economics. They have brought the deficit down and totally erased the $1.4 Trillion deficit his administration inherited from President George W. Bush.

Republicans have purposely ignored these historic reductions in our nation’s deficit under Obama. Over the course of the last two years, Washington has been eaten up with fake scandals and left-field conspiracy theories. To be honest, it would be hard for the most dedicated political student to keep up with them all. While the Republican Party was blowing our tax dollars trying to repeal Obamacare, the Obama Administration went to work lowering the deficit.

It’s clear that the Republicans are suffering from a new form of political dysfunction called “Deficit Attention Disorder.”

The GOP does not want to face the music that the deficits are falling at a historic rate under Obama. This drop has been unexpected, and it has caught the Republicans off-guard. One of their most relied on talking points for the 2016 Presidential Election has evaporated.

The conundrum for the Tea Party, Republican Party, and Libertarians is their mantra of public discourse, and the rallying cry of how liberal and progressive policies are unsound has been discredited by facts and empirical data. It’s as if the carpet has been jerked from underneath their feet. All we have heard from the right from politicians like Sen. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is how Obama refuses to do anything about the debt crisis. A picture of the “egg in the face” comes to mind.

Where are the Republicans’ celebrations? Where are the front page headlines? Why isn’t Fox News telling us it’s a great day to be an American? Any logical person would think this economic upturn would draw praise from the right. However, the realities of this polarized world we live in come into focus. All we have heard from the right is Benghazi-Benghazi-Benghazi!


The Republican Party has used the deficit as a cloaking issue. They use this issue to get the base all riled up knowing that most of their constituents don’t know or care that they have been the biggest villains in terms of driving up our nation’s debt. What the Republican Party is saying is they want to cut spending on social safety-net programs and first-step help initiatives to compensate for their giving the wealthiest members of our society tax cuts. These are the very tax cuts that have already driven downgrades and revenue shortfalls in mostly red states.

Featured image by l_forbes via Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Generic License.