Tim Pawlenty says that growing the economy is a top priority. If he’s serious about that claim, the economic proposal he released this week sure isn’t – even the economic experts in his own party dismissed it as a pipe dream, completely detached from reality.
According to Tim Pawlenty, his plan would use more tax cuts for the wealthy to grow the economy by 5 percent a year for ten years and reduce unemployment to below zero. This has never been done before, which might be why Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a top economic adviser to George W. Bush and John McCain, believes the plan is a fantasy:
The trend growth rate is not going to be 5 percent in the United States. The market just doesn't support that. It just doesn't.
Holtz-Eakin isn't alone in dismissing Tim Pawlenty's plan as less than serious. Two other former Republican CBO directors -- Robert Reischauer and Rudolph Penner - are equally skeptical. According to TPM, Reischauer said that the numbers just don't add up:
You get growth because of investment, an increased labor force, a rise in human capital, and innovation. Add all those components together and they don't sum up to 5 percent.
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by how unrealistic Tim Pawlenty's plan is - the former governor has a history of economic malpractice. As DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse wrote on the blog this week, "Tim Pawlenty’s legacy for Minnesota is simple: economic and fiscal ruin. When he left office, working- and middle-class families were paying higher taxes, the budget had hit record deficits, and funding for schools had been slashed."