By far the best line from this week’s dueling State of the Union messages came from Florida senator Marco Rubio. Nice and simple, and right to the point:
“Presidents in both parties — from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan — have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity.”
That’s a brilliant summary of pro-growth policies, on the supply-side and in a free-market context.
Kennedy slashed tax rates and held down the budget. So did Ronald Reagan, who borrowed Kennedy’s ideas: smaller government, lower tax-rate incentives, and a thriving middle class, where the economic pie grows ever larger.
In short, the Kennedy-Reagan policies were growth policies.
On the other hand, while President Obama quotes John F. Kennedy, he doesn’t draw the dots to Kennedy’s supply-side tax reforms. He does mention the phrase “tax reform,” but he’s not talking about lowering rates across the board while broadening the base to reduce deductions. Rather, he means penalizing companies that operate overseas and favoring companies at home that do what he wants them to do.
Read my full column here.