A Question of Seriousness

Just for giggles, compare this with this. Then we can discuss who the real fiscal conservatives are.

Republicans and Canadian Conservatives have been making all the right noises about fiscal conservatism for decades now. The only problem is that it has been just that, noise. The governments of George W. Bush and Stephen Harper both spent far more than their Democratic and Liberal predecessors and had less to show for it. That's not an opinion, it's fact, available for anyone who bothers to care about such things.

Even the previously helpless Liberals under Michael Ignatieff are making proposals to tame Canada's bewildering deficits that are far and away more serious than anything that has come from the Harper government. In just four short years, the Tories magically took the $13 billion surplus that they inherited from Paul Martin and turned it into a $55.6 billion deficit, the largest in Canadian history. Moreover, no one with any sense of how mathematics works is taking Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's deficit reduction strategy seriously, which is good because the plan is fundamentally silly.

The Republican-Tea Party is almost certain to win the House of Representatives in two weeks and make huge gains in the United States Senate, and their going to do it with nothing more than a cartoonish version of "conservative" policy proposals.

If there is a single message unifying Republican candidates this year, it is a call to grab hold of the federal checkbook, slam it closed and begin to slash spending. To bolster their case that action is needed, Republicans are citing major legislation over the four years that Democrats have controlled Congress, notably the financial system bailout, the economic stimulus and the new health care law.

But while polls show that the Republicans’ message is succeeding politically, Republican candidates and party leaders are offering few specifics about how they would tackle the nation’s $13.7 trillion debt, and budget analysts said the party was glossing over the difficulty of carrying out its ideas, especially when sharp spending cuts could impede an already weak economic recovery.

“On the actual campaign trail, you are hearing virtually none of the kind of blatant honesty that we need about what changes would fix this situation,” said Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group in Washington that promotes fiscal restraint.

The parties share blame for the current fiscal situation, but federal budget statistics show that Republican policies over the last decade, and the cost of the two wars, added far more to the deficit than initiatives approved by the Democratic Congress since 2006, giving voters reason to be skeptical of campaign promises.

Not being specific is just smart politics because the GOP is lying in almost breathtaking ways. Because its constituency of old white folks feels even more entitled than the average American, the Teapubilcans have specifically exempted entitlement spending from any cuts. Representative Paul Ryan, whose "Roadmap" is serious - if politically unrealistic - about entitlements, hasn't been heard from in months. And because launching poorly planned and dreadfully executed wars is a central tenant of modern republicanism, serious cuts at the Pentagon are nothing more than a pipe dream.

The cuts that the GOP and Tea Party candidates are proposing - what they're actually saying, as opposed to what their mindless acolytes think that they're saying - aren't even enough to cover the $3.7 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for another decade, let alone reduce the deficit.

And no, the tax cuts aren't going to expand the economy enough to pay for the tax cuts. How do I know that? The fact that they didn't in their first ten years is a pretty good indication of what the second ten years will bring. Even if there was that much economic growth, it would be swallowed alive by steadily increasing federal deficits. The only real non-political competition between Democrats and Republicans seems to be which can bankrupt the country the fastest.

Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana is the only elected official in America who has made serious proposals in deficit reduction and all that he's gotten for his trouble is scumbags like Grover Norquist comparing him to Nazi reenactors.

In my opinion, Norquist is easily the most dangerous man in America and the most destructive force in the Republican party. Before Norquist's unholy rise, the GOP was a somewhat principled party of fiscal conservatism. In the last 35 years, Norquist and his demented Americans for Tax Reform has made them addicted to deficits because that the only thing that continuous pressures for tax cuts has been known to produce. Grover Norquist is about as credible on the subject of macro economics as Hugo Chavez, if not less so.

If the Republican party was halfway serious about anything, they would throw Norquist and his twisted ideology off of the highest bridge they can find. Americans for Tax Reform would be as thoroughly repudiated as the John Birch Society was half a century ago.

Which brings me back to what's happening in London. The budget cuts and tax increases introduced yesterday by the Cameron government are truly staggering in their boldness. They could very well prove to be politically suicidal and they're going to hurt the British economy badly in the short term. But they are necessary.

Yet from the minute his coalition government was sworn in, the American commentariat and its amen choir in the moron blogosphere have lampooned it as whatever the British version of a RINO would be. They don't have any alternative to offer except the repeatedly discredited offerings of supply-side tax cuts and wishful thinking on future economic growth, but that never stopped most of those assholes from criticizing real conservatives before and I doubt that it ever will.

I invite everyone to look at what Cameron did yesterday and compare it to what the Teapublicans and their reality-challenged bloggers are planning. Then ask yourself who is looking more realistically at the long-term survival and prosperity of the economy. Who is doing more to actually reduce the size of government and the welfare state and who is just mouthing platitudes?

Who's doing something and who's just making noise?