Few people remember it, but President Reagan reflected massive cuts in federal spending in his initial budgets in his first term. Reagan appointed David Stockman, a relatively unknown Congressman from Michigan to the position of Director of the Office of Management and the Budget. Stockman was Reagans' first apointee, less than a week after he was innaugurated. History records that Reagan told Stockman that he was appointed first because he had the most work to do. He was told by his new boss to create a budget with massive spending cuts and that his early appointment was designed to give him time to do it.

Reagan's only proviso to Stockman, other than the amount by which he wanted the budget to be cut, was that "everyone gets hurt equally"--the rich, the poor, people from all parts of the country, everyone was expected to feel the pain of the budget cuts. There were to be no favorites in the budget cutting.

Once the slashed budget was created, Reagan appointed Alan Greenspan to chair a bi-partisan committee of members of Congress, union and business leaders, and senior bureaucrats. The committee was purposely selected to include the farthest right conservatives and the farthest left liberals. Greenspan's charge was to get the diverse group to unanimously endorse Stockman's budget. Greenspan got the endorsement that Reagan was seeking by forcing the committee members to take personal responsibility for the elements of the budget that they might have disagreed with. They all knew that if they wanted certain spending programs retained that other programs that would have to be slashed and that the public would be told that "their" programs were cut because one of the committee members wanted other programs funded. It was kind of an early PayGo budgeting process. It worked and Greenspan got Reagan the bi-partisan endorsement he was seeking. With it, the budget passed Congress with relative ease.

I repeat this story (it's all documented in Alan Greenspan's recent book, The Age Of Turbulence) only to emphasize that the tax cuts and "trickle down economics" would not have worked were they not accompanied by significant federal spending cuts.

Personally, at this point in time I think we need the spending cuts first with a delay of quite awhile before taxes are cut and the trickle down effect is permitted to work. But one thing is absolutely certain--as a nation we need to dramatically cut government spending! Our national debt is simply too massive and our economy too depressed to further increase our debt with a reduction in tax revenues. If our new elected representatives can accomplish that, we will have all been successful in electing the right people.