I don’t think he’s really the problem. First of all, he didn’t come up with that curve. It just got his name tacked on to it. Prior to Ford, the Republicans were more likely to advocate in favor of tax increases, in the name of fiscal responsibility. Ford, in fact, wanted to raise taxes right after he took office in order to deal with inflation, and that’s when Cheney and Rumsfeld introduced the concept of the Laffer curve to him. The truth is, promises of tax cuts have always been popular with voters, and Cheney and Rumsfeld are really political strategists more than policy wonks. They wanted to push tax cuts to get more votes, even if they won’t admit that. But they needed a way to sell tax cuts to old school conservative ideologues, who up until that time felt tax cuts were irresponsible. Enter Arthur Laffer, and the rest is history.
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