McMegan writes, "The Bush administration was not cutting taxes out of crackpot supply-sidism; it was cutting taxes because it wanted to cut taxes, and making extravagently exaggerated claims about the benefits of its policies." Well that makes me feel better. So they're liars who just pretend to be crackpots.
But to say they acted like supply siders to get their tax cuts doesn't explain why they so thirsted for them in the first place. The Bush administration offered at least four, occasionally self-contradictory, rationales for their tax cuts. The first was the basic "the people of America have been overcharged, and I'm here to ask for a refund" appeal. That's a fairness argument. Then there was the policy side of that appeal, which was that "we had a tax surplus," and there was no reason for the government to keep that money. Then, in 2002, the good times ended, and they moved to a stimulus argument, as when Fleischer said "cutting taxes is the best way to spur growth and therefore have a return of bigger surpluses." Then the recession ended, we were told "the tax cuts have worked," and we needed more to keep the growth steady.
