WSJ Oped Defends Perry’s Tax Proposal with More Supplyside Silliness

Yesterday’s oped can be found here:

One attack on a flat tax is that it won't raise enough revenue to fund the government—as if the current tax code is doing that well. But Mr. Perry and other Republicans shouldn't play this static revenue game. The flat tax is desirable precisely because of its spur to faster growth and more job creation, and the dynamic effect those would have on government revenues. The Perry campaign yesterday released a revenue analysis of its plan by John Dunham and Associates that estimated revenues of $2.781 trillion by 2014 and 19.5% of GDP by 2020 (compared to $2.3 trillion and 15.3% in fiscal 2011). All such estimates are speculative, but the point is that revenue history is on the side of the reformers. After the Reagan reform of 1986 that reduced tax rates to 28% from 50%, tax revenues rose by 36% from 1986 to 1990.

Oh boy – the old dynamic scoring canard that somehow fiscal irresponsibility would lead to faster growth! I find it fascinating, however, that the WSJ editorial page has now turned to the second half of the 1980’s rather talking about that alleged doubling of nominal Federal tax revenues (which of course included payroll taxes) following the 1981 tax cut. Memo to the WSJ editorial board – much of what happened since 1981 under Reagan included tax increases. But never mind that.

This John Dunham and Associates “analysis” was ably discussed by Matt Rognlie:

I never thought I’d see the day when I had to lecture a Republican presidential candidate on the importance of supply-side analysis, or the dangers of overexuberant demand-side logic. Apparently that day has come! The truth, of course, is that neither Rick Perry nor his staff have any idea of the analysis behind their numbers. Instead, they hired a consulting firm that specializes in using IMPLAN to create exaggerated estimates for the effect of particular industries (“Meat! Responsible for 5 trillion jobs!”) in order to please its lobbyist clients. The firm evidently knows nothing about tax analysis; it has no credentialed public finance economists on its staff and no experience in analyzing tax policy. When asked to conduct a study, it turned to the only game it knew: IMPLAN, which just happens to be a absurd way to analyze national fiscal policy.