Ramesh Ponnuru challenges supply-side orthodoxly that tax cuts on lower-income individuals are wasteful and destructive. Ponnuru disputes the claim that reducing the tax burden on the lower classes may result in a large number of people who benefit from the welfare state but do not pay for it by pointing out that, given America’s income mobility, most people who do not make enough to pay income taxes now hope to move up the income scale, or hope their children will, to the point where they will pay income taxes. Plus, working people in the lower income brackets do pay federal payroll taxes (not to mention state and local sales taxes).

While advocating that the right expand its tax-cutting agenda to include tax cuts for families is a step foreword, note that Ponnuru, like the supply-siders, supports tax cuts because of their social utility, not because of any moral objection to excessive taxation. The difference between Ponnuru and that supply-siders is Ponnuru has decided that using the tax code to promote stable families is a good thing (he even argues that pro-family tax cuts will help save social security!), but both sides agree the tax code should be manipulated to advance the neocon agenda, rather than scrapped in order to restore a free society.