American Prospect blogger Paul Waldman contends that ultimately, conservatives favor tax cuts not because they’re conducive to economic growth. Rather, “the real source of the conservative support for tax cuts is moral, not practical. They believe that taxes are inherently immoral — the government stealing from you the fruits of your labor (or inheritance or wise investments, as the case may be) to enact its nefarious schemes.”
Therefore, predicted Waldman in a post last Tuesday, “the failure of [Kansas governor Sam] Brownback's [tax-cutting] experiment may provide an effective rhetorical tool liberals can use against conservatives in economic debates, but it won't actually change any conservatives' thinking [since] their belief in tax cuts doesn't rest on the practical effects.”
From Waldman’s post (emphasis added):
Kansas governor Sam Brownback had a plan when he got elected in 2010…Pass huge tax cuts, then watch the state transform into a kind of economic heaven on earth. Brownback surely could never have doubted it would work, since he and those in his party have been saying for decades that tax cuts deliver economic growth, rising tax revenues, general happiness, and shinier, more manageable hair.
…[G]rowth in Kansas did not, in fact, explode…[R]evenues plummeted, leading to severe cutbacks in education and other state services. Brownback nevertheless managed to get re-elected, because it was a non-presidential year and because it's Kansas...
...[A]ll else being equal, tax cuts put more money in people's hands, so they can spend more, which will have some positive impact on the overall economy. The problem is that 1) the effect is never as large as Republicans expect it to be; 2) not only did Brownback's tax cuts go mostly to the wealthy, who are less likely to spend the money, he actually raised taxes on poor people…and 3) the benefits were swamped by the harm created by the inevitable cratering of state revenue.
But if you're Sam Brownback, how do you account for such an outcome? It can't possibly be that the theory on which the entirety of contemporary Republican economic policy rests is false. What's he going to say—"It turns out that tax cuts don't do much good"? Not in this universe.
…The failure of Brownback's experiment may provide an effective rhetorical tool liberals can use against conservatives in economic debates, but it won't actually change any conservatives' thinking. The reason is that their belief in tax cuts doesn't rest on the practical effects. That's an argument that's meant to appeal to everyone, since it concerns something (growth) that just about everyone thinks is good. But the real source of the conservative support for tax cuts is moral, not practical. They believe that taxes are inherently immoral — the government stealing from you the fruits of your labor (or inheritance or wise investments, as the case may be) to enact its nefarious schemes. Taxes should therefore be as low as possible. Conservatives also tend to believe that progressive taxation is doubly immoral, since it takes more from the most virtuous among us.
So my guess is that Brownback sees his experiment as a practical failure but a moral success, and other conservatives would agree. Not that he'd say so in quite those terms, because he knows how it would sound.
