David Stockman on the Deficit

Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, David Stockman, certainly doesn't think much of the current Republican party's policies on taxation and spending. In an interview with Mother Jones, Stockman condemned "the simplistic and reckless idea that the way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes anytime, anywhere, for any reason... It has become a religion, it has become a catechism. It's become a mindless incantation."

In the interview, Stockman points out that Reagan raised taxes in 1982, 1983 and 1984, which "recovered" 40% of the revenues lost from the 1981 cuts.

Stockman did not support the stimulus and is a self-described small-government conservative, but he really bashes the current GOP -- by saying they are failing to follow Ronald Reagan's policies:

[Current] Republicans' taxes bad/tax cuts good mantra is disingenuous. "I don't think those kinds of propositions are appropriate, and you could call them a lie if you really wanted to use rhetoric," he says. "They can't say government is too big if they're saying hands off defense. It's not responsible to say government is the problem when you've embraced 95 percent of the dollars.

"It's very dismaying," he adds, "to see that 30-year descent into the kind of nihilism, know-nothingism that is represented by the Republican Party today." It's not the Gipper's GOP anymore.

Last December, Stockman was on Colbert calling for defense cuts and for the expiration of the Bush (now Obama) tax cuts on the wealthy.

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