Are we talking real or nominal growth rates? I take it as those are nominal, in which case 4.0% is the average of 2000-2014
I believe it is nominal. My data that I calculate shows 3.9% since 2000. But looking at the data since 2000, we had a low of (0.4)% vs. a high of 6.7% during the height of spending for the IRAQ war and Katrina. The vast majority of years, though, we were below the 4.1% floor in Mulvaney's budget and we were nowhere close to the 9.2% increase he shows on the high end in any year. His numbers are aggressive.
But, GDP growth only shows one side of the picture, the other side is the debt side and that's where this trickle down policy really rears its head. Let's look back at the last time this trickle down tax cut policy was enacted on any comparably large scale.
The first big test of trickle down economics was under Reagan, who I love to this day. When he stepped in office in 1981 we had a Debt to GDP ratio of 31%. In the previous 10 years, the highest it had been was 34% in 1972. Reagan, of course, passed a massive tax cut on the highest income levels with the idea that they were the ones who would invest in jobs for the middle class and they could best be trusted to invest those dollars in the economy. Great original idea. If the middle and lower class went to work, tax revenues from their incomes would increase. At least that was the idea.
We did see GDP growth, as expected. The problem was the deficits that came with it, which alarmed Reagan and he was as anti-deficit as all good conservatives should be. All those tax cuts weren't trickling down. Our debt effectively doubled in the first 4 years, leading Reagan to scale back his tax cuts and actually pass a marginal tax INCREASE to try and slow deficits after his budget director saw the data and called trickle down economics a failed policy.
Even after quickly enacting a marginal tax increase, deficits continued to grow, leading George H.W. Bush to enact another marginal tax increase to try and slow deficits in his first term. The tax increase was the right thing to do but it cost him re-election. By the end of Bush's term in 1992 deficits had grown by 4 times what they were before Reagan's massive tax cut on the wealthy, aka Trickle Down Economics. And while GDP did rise, it did not rise sufficiently to offset the deficits that came with those tax cuts. The debt to GDP ratio went from 31% in 1981 to 63% by the time Bush left office 12 years later. The only other time in US history that saw the debt to GDP double in that short of a time was during WWII when we had to take out massive debt to fund the war effort. But there was no war in the 80s.
Clinton again passed a 3rd tax increase since the first trickle down tax cuts in Reagan's first term to again try and slow the debt ratio from growing. Along with bipartisan spending cuts, by the end of Clinton's 2nd term in 2001 the debt to GDP ratio had dropped to 54% and was trending in a healthy direction again. It took 3 tax cuts from 2 republicans and a Democrat to fix the last trickle down experiment of this scale. Unfortunately, people have forgotten (if they ever knew) and the republicans are using a failed policy from the past, the false promise of making free loaders work, and a small tax cut for the middle class to sell us on another major tax cut for their wealthiest donors of their campaigns.