Reagan’s tax cuts never forced Congress to balance the budget. The supply-side windfall never happened, either. By the autumn of Reagan’s first year in office, it was evident the government was growing apace, and the deficit along with it. “We cut the government’s rate of growth nearly in half,” he told Congress, but it was a weak boast—for it was the size of government, not the velocity of its growth, that he had promised to reduce. Government would continue to grow by 2.5 percent a year throughout his administration.
