The Republican Budget Deficits – Plutocracy on The Rise?
I originally posted this as a response to a comment to my note yesterday abouty the US budget deficit. My correspondent was advocating “pro-growth tax cuts as a restraint on government spending”. Here is my post:
Your argument is the traditional right wing one of small government advocacy. I don’t buy it. Because you don’t really mean it. Look at the deficits you Republican folks have been running. There is no small government there at all. You sell small government to your hard line voter base, then actually run big spender programs to woo the center. It’s called switch and bait.
Besides small government is mean-spirited government. It implies walking away from the poor, the young and the elderly. And this in the world’s richest nation! Your moral values are showing through a little too red blooded for my liking.
My larger point is that if you right wingers truly wanted small government you have had your chance: you ran the country unopposed for the past few years. Did you squeeze spending? No. Why? Because you know that the average voter wants those social programs you despise so much. So what did you do? You cheated America. You slashed taxes for your very wealthy friends in order to “starve the beast” then borrowed billions each day to avoid going public with your anti-social policies. You stuck future generations with the consequences of your ideological failure.
The current government has indeed been biggest spender in history. I am shocked that Republicans have embraced the big spending habit. I am shocked at the cowardice of the right wingers who shout about “responsibility” and then run up a profligate spending tab and shrink from a public debate about which programs they’d like to cut. Why can’t the red staters just come out in the open and let America know what they want to eliminate? Social Security? Medicaid? Medicare? Come on now, don’t be coy: have the courage of your supposed convictions and tell us which child, sick, poor, or elderly group you want to go after first.
As to your specific points: the surplus in 1998-99 was small as a percentage of GDP. Good since a larger surplus would have been a drag on the economy. It existed because of the overall health of the economy which was reflected, inter alia, in the stock market, so capital ghains were indeed high. So what? Are you suggesting that we should somehow dismiss that success simply because of that? If so we should dismiss the very slight reduction in the massive Republican deficits in this last year becasue it too was founded on non-recurring items such as abnormal corporate tax collections in 2005.
And no, the run up in defense spending does not account for the entire shift from Clinton surplus to Bush deficit. The tax cuts to the wealthy account for the majority of the shift into red ink. The stimulus those tax cuts produced was anemic: the number jobs created this business cycle has been pathetic by historical standards, and wages have been virtually flat. Your corporate friends have done well however: profits have been extremely strong. That’s what comes from ideologically rather than economically driven tax cut. Lastly, and at the risk of repeating myself: you advocate tax cuts as a way to restrain government spending. Huh? Then how do you account for the explosion of debt under Bush and the Republicans. Exactly where is the restraint? And exactly where is the conservatism?
