Mythmakers: How The GOP Created The 'Deficit Crisis' Narrative And Everyone Else Bought In

[depakid]

With the submission of the Obama administration's budget today, fiscal silly season is opening. President Obama already launched an opening salvo last week with his proposed freeze on non-security-related military spending, which amounts to a rounding error on the ten-year budget projections, which are themselves a rounding error on the long-term budget projections -- at a time when unemployment is running at 10.0 percent.

Fortunately, there is a partial saving grace, which is that the freeze does not set until fiscal year 2011 (which begins in October 2010), and in the meantime Obama has proposed $100 billion in tax cuts and government spending to create jobs. (Whether his proposals are the right way to spend $100 billion is a debate for another time.)

The midterm elections are looming already (note: do we have to be satisfied with a political system in which the legislature is preoccupied with upcoming elections half the time?), and the two big themes seem to be jobs and the deficit. With unemployment at levels not seen since the 1980s, it's obvious why jobs are on the political agenda.

With the federal budget deficit at record (nominal) levels, it also seems obvious that the deficit should be on the agenda, but this is really an unfortunate artifact of our political system. A government deficit is the result of insufficient government saving, and a period of high unemployment is absolutely the worst time to increase government saving.

The sensible solution would be to use the urgency we currently feel to put in place long-term fiscal solutions, but the political system can't handle that (see health care reform as Exhibit A). As a result, when deficits go up, we get lots of short-term politicking about the deficit-in Paul Krugman's words, the "march of the deficit peacocks."

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-kwak/budget-sense-and-nonsense_b_445197.html

[RC]

1. Why is tax cuts the answer to everything?

Start taxing them that has, as in yesteryear.

[Hydra]

2. This whole thing about deficits is funny

If people are working then the tax money isn't coming in. After all, the top people certainly don't have to contribute. It's almost as if they are trying to strangle the federal and state gov'ts by way of non-funding...

[Hannah Bell]

5. you've got something there...

[patrice]

6. I don't understand why it matters when it's all nothing but digits in computer processes to begin .

with.

Some people have more of nothing than others do, so just make some more nothing (more digits) and pass them out to those who don't have enough. Problem solved.

[Hydra]

7. Right

and so we have to ask the question, why are we not allowed to have digits?

Control. Pure and simple.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites."

Orwell was a prophet...either that, or the game was already going, and he simply documented it at the time.

[dhpgetsit]

3. So, where are the deficit hawks??

The Repukes opposed going to PayGo rules UNANIMOUSLY in the senate.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=111&session=2&vote=00012

[depakid]

4. Consistency in action has never been thier strong point- but repeating the frames over and over

and getting everyone (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=433x166323">INCLUDING DEMOCRATS) on the same page with their narrative has worked to their advantage for years.