Deficit Shmeficit

Posted on 11/23/2009 at 12:43 pm by Bob Cesca

I think if you were to ask anyone in a non-polling setting whether they’d rather see job creation or deficit reduction, I can’t imagine they’d go, “Screw feeding my family! I want to cut the deficit!”

I just don’t buy that there’s this massive obsession with deficit over job creation — especially considering that cutting spending will surely hinder the economic recovery and slow job creation. The only alternative Republican solution for job creation is to cut taxes. George W. Bush did that, and the deficit blew up, and several years later we’re looking at 10 percent unemployment.

And, as Atrios points out, can we bury this notion that Democrats are less fiscally responsible than Republicans? Modern Republican presidents have been notorious for running up massive deficits. And our current Democratic Congress doesn’t take a piss without a go-ahead from the CBO.

Republican economic/fiscal ideology has proven to be a failure, and no one can point to a time when Republicans cut spending, cut taxes, cut the deficit and created jobs all at the same time. It doesn’t work. You need to spend in order to grow the economy. And when the economy is robust enough, the focus can return to deficit reduction. But now is NOT the time.

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  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    “Deficit” is a scary word for something too complicated for people to understand. The NYT is running hard to the right trying to frighten people about the public debt today and getting pantsed by their own columnists in the process.

  • steve

    This is why I never took the teabagger movement seriously. Ordinary Americans screaming about the budget deficit? Like they’d be totally cool with being unemployed and uninsured, provided the US had a balanced budget?”Hey, I’ve got cancer and I’m starving, but just knowing federal spending is under control makes it all okay.” Uh, no.

  • Rogect8

    Don’t be coming up on my blogosphere with your “proven-effective-Keynesian-economics” and your precious “logic.”

  • Irish Girl

    But I know tons of people here in AZ that worry about the deficit, constantly. What’s amazing is that some of them are currently unemployed or underemployed. A lot of them are self-employed. They all believe in small govt and they’re either Rethugs or Libertarians. Ultimately, two things have to be going on. First, they’re not hurting bad enough. They’re not at the point where they have to make such tough choices. They’re not having to ask an “Can I eat today” versus “Can the govt spend less”. Second, logic has nothing to do with it in these circumstances.Just compare our behavior with that of people in Africa or in Iraq even. When the Iraqi people seemed to support Sunni rebels against the US, why did they do so? Not because they believed in the principles of Saddam’s party but because the Sunni’s promised them electricity, running water. The fact that they weren’t foreigners was a bonus too, no doubt. But people support those that provide for their basic needs (See Maslow’s hierarchy of needs) UNLESS their basic needs are already taken care of. Then they support someone based on their “knee-jerk”, built-in biases stuffed into their heads by parents, church, etc, etc.

  • J M Ashby

    Our entire monetary system is a system of perpetual debt. There is literally not enough money in existence to pay the interest on the current debt of world. There is no escaping these simple facts as long as we use the federal reserve system.That said…Worrying about the deficit with (real) unemployment hovering around 20% is assinine. We wont be eliminating any deficits if no one has a job.A lot of people are not smart enough to realize that their own joblessness and the joblessness of others has ripple effects. They cant afford to eat out, so less waiters are hired. The waiter that didn’t get hired can’t buy things either. They can’t afford a new TV, so less salesmen are hired. The salesmen that didn’t get hired can’t buy things either. They can’t buy a new piece of shit car, so GM goes bankrupt. So on, So on..

  • iLLogicaL

    I am very liberal, and I think the deficit is a problem. I get that sometimes you have to resort to deficit spending to deal with a crisis, but I don’t think our default stance should be ‘who cares about the deficit, I need a job.’The government could employ us all, at great wages too, for doing nothing except checking our mail once a week. That would surely cut the unemployment numbers, but also fulfill every cartoonish stereotype conservatives have of liberals.The deficit, or more importantly the US debt, is a real and growing problem, and knocking people who raise the issue makes us look kind of naive and silly, in my opinion.

  • http://politicalpartypooper.wordpress.com/ Political Party Pooper

    Bob said,”You need to spend in order to grow the economy. And when the economy is robust enough, the focus can return to deficit reduction. But now is NOT the time.”To a point, government spending MIGHT stimulate economic growth. Especially when that spending, historically, has stimulated manufacturing in America. A clear example of this would be the boom created by munitions manufacture during WW2.The current stimulus seems to have done one thing very well; protect government jobs. No talk of government spending less…in fact, the only item the Federal government could see fit to cut last year was worth $100 Million dollars, if you recall that particular fiasco. How much other Federal spending have we cut since…anyone?In a capitalistic system, only OWNERS can make the economy actually grow. Only owners spend enough money, buy enough things, need enough parts for supply to oil the wheels of industry, and keep the ball rolling.The money we spent in the stimulus package should have gone to companies that make things, not senators and congresspeople to use to repay political favors. If we had given that money to manufacturers with the express demand that they use it to save jobs, our stimulus package would have worked way, way, way better than the one we actually ended up with.By the way, building highways does not save jobs, unless you are only trying to do so temporarily. But throwing money at “shovel ready” projects was the only way that Democrats seemed to want..maybe to repay their contractor friends and award them with no-competition contracts.I’m not in favor of a new stimulus, especially considering that this precious money really only seems to be a giveaway to special interests.

  • MrBrink

    I wonder when “fiscal conservatives” will insist that nation building military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq should be cleared with the CBO and deficit-neutral and should actually save us money…?National job loss is the primary failure of the gloriously rugged-independence of the private sector– lobbying for, and encouraging, conservative philosophy on behalf of quarterly greed margins and deferment of harmful trickle-down-and-out consequences.Labor has been targeted for Third Class citizenship by religious free market extremists and de-regulation kooks since Reagan declared political and economic war on all those greedy labor unions and “welfare queens”– culminating with George W. Bush’s Republican party platform tax cuts for billionaires during “Wartime,” of all times.Keep cutting taxes for the wealthy. Keep surging and privatizing the military. Keep polluting with dinosaur technology. Keep outsourcing good paying jobs while re-investing all those savings toward CEO “talent,” false and manipulative advertising, and the appeasement of short-selling shareholders and their Happiness Index.We’ll be nowhere in no time. Just in time for a Republican to run on a platform of “change.”

  • JDS

    Galbraith on Moyershttp://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10302009/transcript1.htmlJAMES GALBRAITH: With all respect to the deficit hawks, they don’t understand the situation. And they don’t know what they’re talking about, in terms of federal finances.And from 2004http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=bankers_versus_base