Thinking about Ed Koch's 1981 testimony before Congress

This is from memory, but I sharply recall that one of Ed Koch's officials (Ed Koch was mayor of New York City from 1977 to 1989) testified before congress in 1981. The official clearly stated that New York City balanced its budget by cutting spending first and only then raising taxes. 

Reagan ran on a platform based on doing the reverse.  The argument was that we could 'starve' Congress by cutting taxes.  This argument was in parallel to yet separate from the supply side economics argument. 

The problem is this:  If potatoes go on sale, I am going to wind up buying more potatoes.  That's econ 101.  Since people discount future costs so heavily, we wound up putting government on sale and people wound up buying more and more of it. 

I'm not blaming Reagan for trying.  But can we move beyond tactics that clearly don't work?  Sure, it's been politically expedient to head for tax cuts.  Sure, tax cuts stimulate growth.  But we must take responsibility for teaching people that they can get a dollar's worth of government for 90 cents.  The growth of the federal government is as much the responsibility of so-called conservatives as of anyone else. 

If you want freedom, you want a small government.  Making people pay up front for government is, in the long term, the best way to get small government.  I wish our conservative political leadership had the courage to tell this to the American People.