starving the beast query

[Grant Barrett]

I've done a bit of digging on this term. In the economic sense, I have
an early cite from the Washington Post, Oct. 21, 1985, attributed to
Stockman, but it could easily go back further (though it is the same
one Paul McFedries has at WordSpy, and likely where your colleague
found the information). I was more concerned with substantiating the
term's existence and meaning than I was with finding an absolute point
of origin.

In 1992, Sen. Moynihan said something which leads me to believe the
Reagan Presidential Library would be the best place to verify the
origin of the economic term, particularly in documents relating to the
transition team: "The first thing to know about the budget deficit is
that it was designed to paralyze domestic policy. I can testify that
this is difficult to comprehend. The policy--it was known in the inside
as 'starve the beast'--was put in place in the first months of the
Reagan administration, having been formulated the previous autumn."

There's also a joke I have seen repeatedly as explaining the skeptic's
view of "starve the beast" economics. In it, a man, thinking his mule
costs too much to feed, gradually cuts its food ration every day. One
day the man comes around without his mule and his friends ask, "Where's
the mule?" The man says, "Just when I got him down to eating nothing
every day, he up and died on me." I do not have cites for this joke.

These are probably false leads, but:

There is a story from Dial, June 1920, p. 693, which bears a similarity
to the "starve the beast" economics detractor's view, though it was
more concerned with obstructionist policies. In the tale, titled "A
Political Horse," said horse resists all attempts to move, whether it
be pulled, pushed, lifted, kicked, beat, lured with oats, flattered,
insulted, etc. It goes, "We decided finally that it was of no use and
the only weapon we had left to use was--starvation. We would starve the
beast until he stood upon his legs, realizing also that the more we
starved him, the less would he be able to stand on his legs." The horse
moves when bothered by an automobile, however.

"Starve the beast" was also used in the Twenties as part of an
anti-tuberculosis campaign. How widespread the campaign was, I do not
know. I have seen just a handful of ads for the campaign.

The cites below have the neither the frequency of occurence nor the
ring of a pat phrase like the economic or tubercular "starve the
beast."

An 1898 article in the Sandusky, Ohio, Morning Star about conditions in
Cuba reads, "Men are starved [there] as the laws of this land will not
allow the citizens to starve the beast."

Another cite from Dec. 1912 in the Sheboygan Press: "Can the most
learned savant of Harvard or the Sorbonne tell you anything new about
how to starve the beast and nourish the angel in you, anything Marcus
Aurelius or Saul of Tarsus had not told?"


On Mar 9, 2004, at 08:57, Allen D. Maberry wrote:

> I have a query from a colleague about the phrase "starving the beast"
> used in economics which refers to the government policy of tax cuts in
> order to take money away from the federal administration and to
> increase the deficit, which, in turn, forces the government to reduce
> spending. My colleague did a Google search and traced the phrase back
> to Reagan budget advisor David Stockman in the early 1980s.
>
> Is that the first use of the expression in the economic sense? Is it
> used in other contexts and if so what are they, and where did the
> phrase originate?
>
> Many thanks in advance for your help.
>
> allen
> maberry at u.washington.edu
>
>
--
Grant Barrett

Assistant Editor, Lexical Reference
Project Editor, Historical Dictionary of American Slang
Oxford University Press

American Dialect Society webmaster
http://www.americandialect.org/