This is CBSI on the world.

I'm John Batchel.

I welcome Adam Michelle, the director of tax policy at the Cato Institute,

to help me pick through what we see now is a challenge again

to the members of Congress, to the chief executive,

and the people of the United States,

about the deficit, the overwhelming debt, and the shutdown altogether.

However, we're going to start in history, as Adams posted a piece at Civitas Outlook recently

that has a backstory to it.

And I choose to start with Ronald Reagan's tax cut of the 1980s because there was

a promise in it. $3 of cuts for every dollar of increase in taxes. That was said and it was sold

and it worked then. But, Adam, a very good evening to you. What I learned from the selling of the Reagan tax cut

is that it wasn't a tax cut so much as a way to continue to spend money to achieve certain

short-term goals or to satisfy political balance. Is that something in the past? Is that an antique

idea for today? It wouldn't work

anymore. Good evening to you. Good evening to you. The Reagan era, I think, is important to go back

to. And when people hear the Reagan tax cuts, they often think of the 1986 tax reform that

was a massive reform of the whole tax code.

But you have to go back to 1981 when Reagan actually proposed and gotten to legislation,

his most pro-growth tax cut that actually cut taxes.

However, because they didn't cut spending when those tax cuts went into effect,

in 1982, there was political pressure to roll some of those back. And there was a political promise that was sold

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