True or false, big government is stifling the American spirit.

Well, let's have it out right here and right now.

Welcome, everyone, to another debate from Intelligent Squared.

You asked a contest of ideas, a verbal joust which only one side can win.

I'm John Donovan of ABC News, welcoming you to the Skurball Center for the Performing Arts

at New York University and to hundreds of NPR stations across the nation.

As these two teams on either side of me, two teams of two, try to win you over.

The motion we are debating, big government is stifling the American spirit.

And comprising the team that is arguing for this motion, we have Phil Graham and Art Laffer.

And I'd like to begin by talking to Phil Graham.

You were now a banker, but you long ago were a professor of economics,

and in the time in between you spent two decades in Congress where your reputation was made

as a Senator in Congressman.

And I don't think many people know this, but you now remember this,

but you actually went into Congress as a Democrat.

And it was at the time that you supported the Reagan tax cuts in 1981 that your fellow Democrats pushed you off of the House Budget Committee and you switched parties.

As you think back, was that a traumatic event or was your inner Republican screaming to get out all along?

I did more than that. I resigned from Congress and I went back home and I ran again because I'd been elected as a Democrat

and even though I'd been rated as the most conservative member of Congress,

I wanted people to have a choice as to whether I stayed or not.

Art Laffer, your partner is the only member of this panel who has an actual entry in an online dictionary when you look up Laffer Curve.

This is Laffer.

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