Last time on Freakonomics Radio, we spoke with one of the chief architects of the controversial

new Republican tax package.

I'm Kevin Hacett, I'm the 29th chairman of the president's council of economic advisors.

Hacett discussed the theory behind cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

There's this thing called the capital deepening contribution to productivity growth.

And he defended the plan against its critics.

You know, we're hoping to prove them wrong.

And I think that the data so far are doing that.

If you're an economist with the background in academic and policy research, which Kevin

Hacett is, then becoming chair of the council of economic advisors is pretty much a dream job.

Here's how three former CEA chairs describe it.

Well, the job of the CEA chair is interesting because you really have one client and it's

the president.

An old friend of mine gave me the advice when I took the job, he said, a good CA chair,

like a good gardener, is 90% pulling weeds and 10% planting seeds.

Well, partly it was about helping to develop economic policies, but we also spent time

helping to market and sell those policies we agreed with, which in my case was about 90%

of the administration's policies.

You might think that economists pledging allegiance as they do to empiricism and hard data

would be fairly unified as to what constitutes something like good tax policy.

You might also think, but there wouldn't really be such a thing as a democratic economist

or a Republican economist, right?

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