In 1981, the supply siders commandeered the Reagan Presidency and employed their Voodoo economics,
as Bush senior had called it in 1980. He was saying that tax cuts would
not increase government revenues. As you can see on the graph above (or get the update and more with this New App),
the Voodoo failed just as Bush predicted, and the supply siders turned a
32-year winning streak into a debt disaster that continues to this day.
For 20-years, under Reagan and the Bushes, the national debt increased
compared to GDP every single year. In most other years it decreased.
Twenty years in a row can't be just an accident, but to understand you
need to learn the voodoo strategy. (Why graph Debt / GDP ?)
What's causing today's huge deficits? Deficit basics. Top 4 deficit causes.


Bush senior fought against it, so the
Republicans didn't support him and he lost to Clinton, who put an end to
it supply-side economics. G. W. Bush brought it back full strength,
with V.P. Cheney saying "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Currently
supply siders are in full control of the Republican party.




The green line shows
what would have happened to the national debt if Reagan and the Bushes
had balanced their budgets as Reagan claimed he would. G.W. Bush, in all
modesty, claimed he would "retire nearly $1 trillion in debt over the
next four years. This will be the largest debt reduction ever achieved
by any nation at any time."
Conservatives are quite embarrassed
by this performance, so they have invented a cover story: The
Democratic Congress did it. Nice try. But for 12 of the 20 years the
Congress was not Democratic. Also, presidents can veto, and when it was
Democratic, Congress passed smaller budgets on average than the Republican Presidents asked for. Presidents propose the budget, and they have the most influence.