Now that we have an actual Bush administration proposal in print--one that Republican senator Judd Gregg doesn't think much of--it is time for an accountability moment. The Bush administration and its flacks and flunkies have long promised that the administration was going to "cut the deficit in half" by the time in left office in fisal 2009. The press by and large reported this straight--not pointing out that the "cut in half" was from a highballed projected peak deficit number that was artificially inflated in order to set the bar artificially low, not pointing out that such a deficit still left fiscal policy far from where it ought to be, and not pointing out that the Bushies' policies would produce such a reduction only if everything broke right and we had four uninterrupted years of macroeconomic good news. Republican economists who cared more about pleasing White House communications than in informing their audience chimed in--why, I get 100 hits on Google for Greg Mankiw saying both when he was under and since he came out from under message discipline that George W. Bush's proposals were projected to reduce the deficit by half by 2009 http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en-us&q=mankiw+%22the+deficit+in+half%22&btnG=Search. Not under any projection that I would recognize as straight.Need I say more?
Note: I implore all readers of this blog (all 10 of you?) to go read Delong's entire post on this. I don't think I've ever read something he has written where he has been this angry. It's worth five minutes of your time--hell it's worth fifteen.
1 comment:
Unfortunately, the American people are the ones footing this bill.
The expenses are going towards (you guessed it) defense and Homeland Security. And yet, we have little to nothing to show for either. We're STILL in Iraq, Afghanistan is worse, and aside from a few homegrown nuts, there has not been any major threat on American soil.
And yet, cuts are being made to other things that have made America leaders of the world. Education and research in particular have shrunk to incredible lows to the point that it's incredibly difficult, if not almost impossible, to do productive research.
Why not spend a fraction of that war chest on something that's actually going to make a difference? You know, provide better learning facilities to kids or fund things that will aid in the fight against cancer?
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