Read the whole thing. I kept looking for some evidence -- any evidence at all -- that Barack Obama has claimed that cutting taxes will lead to "increased tax revenues." Instead I read a bunch of boilerplate stuff about making "new investments," and strengthening the economy and strong foundations and so forth -- which could really come from the lips of any politician, or from the pages of any pop management book, or just about any self-help guide.
For 30 years, Republicans have held as an article of faith that tax cuts spur the economy and generate more revenue. "Deficits don't matter," as former Vice President Dick Cheney said. Now President Obama is adapting Republican arguments to his own agenda -- only substituting spending for tax cuts.
Call it the Democratic version of Reaganomics, the supply-side theory that replaced Republicans' longtime belief in balanced budgets. As popularized by President Ronald Reagan, the theory holds that cutting income taxes encourages people to work harder and to produce more goods, sparking economic growth and increased tax revenues.
With Congress's approval on Wednesday of a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint embracing Mr. Obama's spending initiatives for education, health care and energy, the president extolled the potential benefits of these "new investments." In his nationally televised news conference that night, he said the budget would start laying "a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century."
Democrats have derided Republicans as going beyond ideology to theology with their antitax orthodoxy. But it was Mr. Obama who borrowed from the Bible for his "new foundation" economic metaphor. In an address at Georgetown University, where he used some variation of "invest" for "spend" 14 times, the president recalled Jesus' parable in the Sermon on the Mount about two men, a foolish one who builds a house on sand and a wise one whose foundation is rock.
As Dean Baker notes, there seems to be a lot of confusion between the claim that tax breaks can stimulate growth -- which everyone believes -- and the claim that tax breaks will increase revenues, which most Democrats do not believe. Including Barack Obama.
It's silly to equate supply-side economics with a disdain for balanced budgets; supply-side economists are well aware that every dollar spent by government has to be raised in tax.
The misconception that they don't care about deficits is created by politicians who profess to understand supply-side economics but twist its concepts into silly phrases that suit their political purposes, phrases like "every tax cut raises revenue."
The most famous such fiscal canard is Cheney's "deficits don't matter." The NYT is correct to point out that President Obama seems determined to prove that Cheney was right. Believing in the virtue of willy-nilly government spending is just as unscientific as any fiscal stupidity that came out of the Bush Administration. (Caveat: For all I know, Cheney may have been misquoted. Perhaps he said, "Deficits don't matter as much as some people think," which would be true.)