“Starving the Beast”, is the view that taxes should be cut in order to force severe cuts in public spending. It is the unannounced policy of the Bush government and the Republican party, camouflaged as supply-side economics. Here it is for once coming nearly undisguised, delivered through an unsuspicious messenger.

First: take away what feeds the beast:
CNN – January 25, 2001 – Greenspan yes tax cuts

In testimony to the Senate Budget Committee, Greenspan declined to comment on President Bush’s $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut plan, saying a decision on the size of a cut was best left up to Congress and the political process. But the Fed chairman’s backing of tax cuts as economically sound likely will provide a boost to the new administration’s proposals.

However, Greenspan played down the idea that tax cuts would provide an immediate boost to the economy, saying that tax reduction is appropriate as a long-term economic measure now because of estimates of a larger-than-expected federal surplus.”

Greenspan endorsed tax cuts – which are now proven to have gone mostly to the richer part of the population – because there was a (perceived) budget surplus. First step taken.

Second step: bury the beast:
CNN August 27, 2004 – Greenspan: Aging to strain U.S.

“If we have promised more than our economy has the ability to deliver to retirees without unduly diminishing real income gains of workers, as I fear we may have, we must recalibrate our public programs so that pending retirees have time to adjust through other channels,” Greenspan said in prepared remarks at an annual symposium.
…
Greenspan said raising payroll taxes to fund shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare might only worsen the situation by imposing an extra burden on workers.

Greenspan could have just reverted his 2001 position, but that would not fit his master’s desire. He frames his statement to stifle the opposition. Saying “more than our economy has the ability to deliver“ stops any discussion about redistributing whatever the economy is able to deliver; “without unduly diminishing real income gains of workers“ suggests that this would be the only available option at hand – diminishing capital gains is not mentioned; “raising payroll taxes“ is framing to a single source of government income. The whole statement also frames him: Greenspan, the man apprehensive of social needs and workers.

There are other solutions at hand: Increase taxes for the wealthy, now as low as 1932. The health care systems could be streamlined and the costs of medication lowered. Reducing the defence budget would make for a safer world and free money for pensions.

But “Starving the Beast” is not meant as a threat to capital gainers, defence contractors or the pharma industry, it is a threat to the majority of the country.

In a long 2003 article, Paul Krugman came to the conclusion:

The astonishing political success of the antitax crusade has, more or less deliberately, set the United States up for a fiscal crisis. How we respond to that crisis will determine what kind of country we become.