George HW Bush was fiscally responsible –unlike Donald Trump | Jeffrey Frankel

The late president tried to tackle the budget deficit by doing a deal with Democrats to raise taxes

When George HW Bush was laid to rest last week, the encomiums appropriately remarked on his general decency and competence, which tended to be followed by a "but". For journalists and historians, it is "but he was only a one-term president". He lost the 1992 election, in part because of the recession of 1990-91. For his fellow Republicans, however, it is "but he broke with the legacy of Ronald Reagan by repudiating his 'no new taxes' pledge". Bush's electoral defeat was blamed on that supposed betrayal.

But Bush's mistake was that he made that anti-tax pledge in the first place and stuck to it in the first part of his presidency. His courageous 1990 reversal on fiscal policy set the stage for a decade of economic growth that eventually achieved budget surpluses.

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