'Deficit Hawks' Have Amnesia
Robert Creamer
HuffPost
Yesterday, the Co-Chairs of the Bi-Partisan Commission on the Deficit proposed a package of dramatic cuts in government expenditures and changes in the tax code that they said were meant as "shock therapy" to force attention onto the growing Federal deficit.
The implication is that putting the Federal Deficit represents a massive, intractable crisis -- a national emergency that requires all of us to sacrifice. For many "deficit hawks" the federal deficit has morphed into an enemy that threatens the nation like a foreign army. They claim that victory in their war on the deficit requires "shared sacrifice" -- that "we" simply cannot afford to continue on the current path to fiscal perdition.
These people have lost their memories. They seem to have forgotten what caused the deficit. And they have certainly forgotten that we know how to eliminate the deficit without making the middle class pay the bill.
Recall that just ten years ago, at the end of the Clinton administration, the Federal budget was generating a long-term surplus. It was in the black as far as the eye could see. The big question of the day was, "what do we do with the surplus?"
Then George Bush and the Republicans in Congress systematically eliminated the surplus and replaced it with budgets that generated more debt in eight years than all of the debt generated by all of the presidents before him. How?
(More here.)
HuffPost
Yesterday, the Co-Chairs of the Bi-Partisan Commission on the Deficit proposed a package of dramatic cuts in government expenditures and changes in the tax code that they said were meant as "shock therapy" to force attention onto the growing Federal deficit.
The implication is that putting the Federal Deficit represents a massive, intractable crisis -- a national emergency that requires all of us to sacrifice. For many "deficit hawks" the federal deficit has morphed into an enemy that threatens the nation like a foreign army. They claim that victory in their war on the deficit requires "shared sacrifice" -- that "we" simply cannot afford to continue on the current path to fiscal perdition.
These people have lost their memories. They seem to have forgotten what caused the deficit. And they have certainly forgotten that we know how to eliminate the deficit without making the middle class pay the bill.
Recall that just ten years ago, at the end of the Clinton administration, the Federal budget was generating a long-term surplus. It was in the black as far as the eye could see. The big question of the day was, "what do we do with the surplus?"
Then George Bush and the Republicans in Congress systematically eliminated the surplus and replaced it with budgets that generated more debt in eight years than all of the debt generated by all of the presidents before him. How?
- They passed the Bush tax cuts, with the lion's share of benefit going to millionaires and billionaires. Who wouldn't gladly pay the tax rates of the 1990's today and experience the benefit of the economy of the late 1990's?
- They initiated two wars that were paid for entirely with borrowed money. These two wars alone account for 25% of the accumulated deficit since 2000.
- They allowed Wall Street to wreck the economy and cause the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression. That caused tax revenue to the government to collapse, and required massive federal spending to prevent the economy from going into free fall.
(More here.)
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