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We shall fight on the newsgroups. We shall fight on the web pages. We shall fight on the mailing lists. We will never surrender.

Just as Winston Churchill used similar words to rally his people against the Nazis in 1940, I invoke those words the rally our troops to bring home the victory of supply side economics. Supply side economics is clearly the best economic policy for our country, as the historical evidence shows.

During the Reagan Years (calendar years 1981-8, budget years 1982-9) this nation experienced it's longest period of peacetime growth. What is even more remarkable is that this followed the stagflation of the 1970s and two recessions (1980 and 81-2) from the Carter-era economy. And that is only with half of supply-side implemented in one form or another. Significant reductions in spending were never achieved, for example.

Yet candidate Clinton called the 1980s "the worst economy in 50 years" and claimed that only the rich got richer. He was, of course, lying. The periods before and after the Reagan Years are, in fact, periods when only the rich got richer. During the Reagan Years, everyone got richer.

We now have a period of similar length (1989-96) to measure side-by-side with the Reagan Years. While the Reagan Years were a time of decreasing tax rates and regulations, the period since has seen a reversal. More regulations and higher taxes (under the guise of "taxing the rich", of course) have been the hallmark of this period. This provides a clear case of Reaganomics (mostly supply side) versus Bush-Clintonomics (mostly "bigger government").

Let's compare the two periods for some major economic factors for the eight years of the Reagan Presidency and the six years (using the most recently available statistics) of the period since.

Although the table isn't perfect (average budget deficits do not tell the direction of increase or decrease, for example) it does a good job of comparing the two periods. Despite the denigration of the 1980s by the liberals and the press (pardon the repetition ;) the period since has failed to exceed its economic performance. Note that the most strident critics of Reaganomics, unable to attack the GDP growth, inflation, unemployment and poverty decreases turned instead to lesser measures such as productivity to try and tarnish the period. However, the period since has lacked in this categories as well! Not to mention the greater erosion of manufacturing jobs, supposedly the central pillar of the U.S. economy.

What Republicans need to do is rally around supply side. A roll-back of the increases in taxes and regulations since 1989 will reinvigorate the economy and return it to 3%+ growth rates without inflation worries. Real cuts in spending will ensure that the budget is balanced and Federal spending is reduced, thus freeing the economy into even greater performance. Growth rates of 4-6% annually are not out of reach.

Greater details of the Reagan economic record can be found on The Reagan Information Page, and a preview of this decade's decline is foretold in Derailing the Reagan Revolution, first published in 1992. Ironically enough, Mexico's rise in the 1980s (also detailed in Derailing) is starkly contrasted by its own derailing in 1994 when it devalued its currency, despite the evidence that devaluation was the primary cause of Mexico's problems prior to the Salinas administration.

[T]he past seven years have yielded the slowest growth rate of any seven-year period since the Great Depression. —Stephen Moore, National Review, July 1, 1996, page 38.

...every income quintile—the poorest to the richest—recorded gains in incomes in the Reagan years.... —Stephen Moore, National Review, July 1, 1996, page 38.

...almost every fatuous complaint made about the supply-side policies of the Reagan Administration is actually highly descriptive of the tax, spend, and re-regulate policies of post-Reagan America. —Stephen Moore, National Review, July 1, 1996, page 38.

What Republicans need to do is rally around supply side. A roll-back of the increases in taxes and regulations since 1989 will reinvigorate the economy and return it to 3%+ growth rates without inflation worries.