Harper's Plan: Starve the Beast

December 2, 2008

Harper's Plan: Starve the Beast

"Starving the Beast" is an economic-political strategy to use budget deficits via tax cuts to force future reductions in the size of the (beast) government.

Tom Flanagan is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Calgary. He's a member of the Calgary school, the Fraser Institute and is a former chief of staff to Steven Harper.

With Harper, Flanagan drafted the infamous "Firewall" letter to Alberta in 2001 urging Alberta to control Federal Health Care and opt out of the RCMP and the Canada Pension Plan. He is a close confidant of Harper and has been referred to by Western Standard founder Ezra Levant as "the master strategist, the godfather – even of Harper."

Flanagan recently had this to say on Harper's economic strategy in the near future:

"I'm hopeful there will be some ideologically-driven, neo-conservative cuts to government," political scientist Tom Flanagan, a former chief of staff to Harper, said in an interview.

Such cuts, he added, would be consistent with Harper's long-term goal of reducing the size and scope of government.

"I think that's always been sort of the long-term plan, the way that Stephen was going about it of first depriving the government of surpluses through cutting taxes . . . You get rid of the surpluses and then it makes it easier to make some expenditure reductions."