Starve the Beast
Not every deficit is an accident. Some are the plan.
Government spending has real waste and excess in it — just like personal spending does. That's not in dispute. But there's a specific strategy worth understanding on its own terms: "Starve the Beast."
How the Strategy Works
The idea dates back to the late 1970s, credited most famously to economist Milton Friedman: rather than trying to cut spending directly — a political fight nobody wins outright — cut taxes first. The resulting deficit becomes the pressure that eventually forces spending cuts, because a big enough deficit makes cuts feel less like a choice and more like an emergency.
The strategy has been used, in various forms, to build the case for cutting the country's biggest social programs:
The Track Record Is Mixed — At Best
Here's the part worth knowing: even many of the strategy's original conservative supporters now say it hasn't delivered on its promise. Tax cuts under multiple administrations grew the deficit as predicted — but the spending cuts that were supposed to follow largely never came. Instead, deficit spending simply continued alongside the lower revenue.