The basic problem was that Reagan believed, as Lyn Nofziger put it, that members of Congress "wouldn't lie to him when he should have known better."[xxxi] As a result of TEFRA, Reagan learned to "trust but verify," whether he was dealing with a Speaker of the House or a president of the Soviet Union."
http://www.reagansheritage.org/html/...dwards12.shtml[/QUOTE]
No one lied to Reagan. But even if ALL of the tax cuts Reagan wanted in TEFRA had been implemented, you actually would have seen a GREATER ATTENUATION of GDP growth than if they had not been put aside.
Why? Because the Reagan tax cuts primarily went to the ECNOMICALLY INEFFICIENT Spenders - ones with a Fiscal Multiplier of 0.7
Meanwhile the spending cuts would have taken funds out of ECONOMICALLY EFFICIENT Spenders - ones with Fiscal Multiplers between 2.0 and 4.0 in their spending.
So you if those cuts had taken place balancing the $98 billion. you would have seen a drop in GDP growth of roughly $270B-$330B. Now that still would have left the GDP in positive growth territory. So numbnut Supply Side ideologues would claim that this meant the cuts were "succesful in growing GDP"
Except that if you are truly trained in engineering as you claim you well know that when you have an existing rising systemic rate, you have to normalize successive data for the CHANGE in rate rather than the rate itself. IOW if you are falling at 9.8m/sec/sec - and you open a parachute, you now are STILL FALLING, but your RATE OF INCREASE changes...
So again, there is ZERO evidence that the tax cuts Reagan proposed in REFRA would have resulted in a balanced budget. Instead you would have seen about a 55%-60% drop in the rate of GDP increase. Which is rather catastrophic