Starve the beast

[3] On July 14, 1978, economist and future Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan testified to the Senate Finance Committee: "Let us remember that the basic purpose of any tax cut program in today's environment is to reduce the momentum of expenditure growth by restraining the amount of revenue available and trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending.

"[6] The earliest known use of "starve the beast" is in a 1979 newspaper article quoting Santa Rosa, California city councilman Jerry Wilhelm at a tax forum sponsored by the Libertarian Party.

"[8] Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson's tax-cut plan, incorporating a flat tax, also deferred paying for the larger deficits it would create.

He wrote that the "beast is starving, as planned" and that "Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they're not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs.

"[19] Historian Bruce Bartlett, former domestic policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, referred to "starve the beast" as "the most pernicious fiscal doctrine in history", and blames it for the increase in US government debt since the 1980s.

"[21] Lobbyist Grover Norquist is a well-known proponent of the strategy and has famously said, "My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

"[22][23] A related idea known as "Feed the beast", refers to increasing taxes for the purported purpose of balancing the budget only to make the government spend those inflows.

Their conclusions have been disputed by economist and writer Bruce Bartlett in The Fiscal Times, who stated that tax increases in the early 1990s helped contribute to more austere budgets in the late 1990s.

Ronald Reagan gives a televised address from the Oval Office , outlining his plan for tax reductions in July 1981.
Total tax revenues were calculated as a percentage of GDP for the U.S. in comparison to the OECD and the EU 15 .