[Blogger’s note: The following is a penetrating glimpse of the obvious, at least to this readership. But consider this one more in the cataloque of facts useful for dealing with your wingnut contacts]
If you care about federal deficits,* then, of course, the Republican Party is the last one you want to trust with the budget.
Those of us with a capacity for memory better than that of goldfish may remember the simplest confirming instance: Bill Clinton raised taxes, created a surplus, and famously presided over peace and prosperity. George W. Bush (remember him ?– Mitt Romney doesn’t)…not so much.
But now, we are told, we have the new improved Republican Party, in which the very serious man of numbers and ideas, Paul Ryan, will lead us to fiscal sanity and the promised budgetary land of liberty-induced-prosperity.
Or not.
Over to you, KThug:
So if we look at the actual policy proposals, they look like this:
Spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
Tax cuts: $4.3 trillionThis is, then, a plan that would increase the deficit by around $2.6 trillion. [over the first ten years]
How, then, does Ryan get to call himself a fiscal hawk? By asserting that he will keep his tax cuts revenue-neutral by broadening the base in ways he refuses to specify, and that he will make further large cuts in spending, in ways he refuses to specify.
And this is what passes inside the Beltway for serious thinking and a serious commitment to deficit reduction.
The Republican Party is not simply a bunch of kleptomaniac sociopaths; they really will gut the Untied States of America. They are the party of decline and fall. For Romney, read Romulus Augustulus.
Factio Grandaeva Delenda Est.
Image: Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Innocence Preferring Love To Wealth, 1804.
*And one would be reasonable to do so, sort of, under some time horizon. But not in the midst of the Great Recession…
beltane
Who will be the next Odoacer?
Redshift
OT, but I have to brag. I just got back from probably my best canvassing shift ever (along with my partner Manuel.) We had 62 people on our list, and seventeen of them were home, which is quite good. We found eleven strong Obama supporters (and two leaners), and recruited six potential volunteers. And registered a voter who had moved from Michigan.
A lot of that is luck of the draw (Manuel’s cousin happened to be on our list, and we signed up him and his wife to volunteer), but I’m also getting better at recruiting.
If you’re in a state with an active campaign, and you’re not doing this, get out there. It’s actually fun, it’s good exercise, and it’s not hard. The few Republicans we talked to were almost all polite; the worst said “I’m voting for the American!” and we had to keep from laughing until we were out of earshot.
Ed Drone
Why is it the “Great Recession?” I think it’s the damned “Petit Depression.”
Ed
JCT
Nice Bowie ref.
One of my favorite recent Pierce comments was when he argued that Romney picked Ryan to give Krugman a stroke. Imagine the dent in K-Thugs desk from his head.
PeakVT
Here’s a less beautiful but more direct image for this post.
They just don’t care about the deficit. It’s the biggest of the Republican Big Lies.
cmorenc
To what extent are Ryan/Romney employing the classic winger/taxes/economic claim that the difference between the 1.7 trillion in spending cuts and the 4.3 trillion in tax cuts will be more than made up by increased government revenue from the increased economic growth produced by the tax cuts? To what extent have they explicitly or by unmistakable implication, claimed this alleged phenomena as a means to lower the amount of tax exclusions, deductions, and loopholes that will need to be eliminated to make it allegedly “revenue-neutral”?
Comrade Mary
Nice summary and — wow. That really does look like Ryan in a dress.
dmsilev
Krugman missed one key aspect of Ryan’s (and Romney’s) plan: Assert, without any actual evidence, that cutting tax rates will magically cause the economy to flower and the resultant boom will of course take care of any issues.
Whenever a Republican has their tax/budget plan has been poorly scored by some group of analysts and they complain that the group should have used “dynamic scoring”, that’s what they mean.
Both Sides Do It
Good choice of title. At some point we gotta put on that war paint like Shosanna Dreyfus and just burn the evil fuckers to the ground.
jl
@cmorenc:
” To what extent are Ryan/Romney employing the classic winger/taxes/economic claim that the difference between the 1.7 trillion in spending cuts and the 4.3 trillion in tax cuts will be more than made up by increased government revenue from the increased economic growth produced by the tax cuts? ”
I think they are relying on that BS almost entirely. That is why, when they ask the CBO to score their proposals, they explicitly carve out that part of analysis and present the required conclusions as assumptions that are to be accepted for the scoring analysis.
That is why honest analysts call the analysis that Ryan and House GOP have forced the CBO to do “mystery meat”.
Tehanu
@Ed Drone:
I prefer “Great Depression 2: This Time It’s Personal”.
Hill Dweller
@dmsilev: Of course, the Republicans attacked Obama for initially using dynamic scoring with the stimulus. Ultimately, the Obama admin abandoned dynamic scoring. Now the wingnuts love it.
Mark S.
The media has tried to pass off a lot of stupid people as geniuses and intellectuals, but Ryan has got to take the cake. Shit, it’s not even fair to compare him to Newt Gingrich, who at least had an original idea every five years and actually passed some legislation. Ryan is just a dumbshit who seems to have only read Atlas Shrugged.
I’m also amazed how horrible he is at defending any of his “ideas,” whether his interlocutor is Birt Hume or some granny.
jl
@Hill Dweller:
There is nothing wrong with dynamic scoring, the question is whether you are explicit in your assumptions and show your work on how you think tax rates will affect overall economic activity and the tax base.
I think the gimmick here is that assumptions needed to get dynamic scoring results that support supply-side conclusions, given the relatively low US tax rates, fared poorly in the face of reality, to put it politely.
To be diplomatic, the US economy did not necessarily develop to the advantage of supply side dynamic scoring efforts.
Or, more bluntly: total Fail.
Edit: to be clear, these original efforts, more honest, but failed, efforts were in the Reagan administration.
So, what they do now, is do their own dynamic analysis in quiet back rooms, or maybe just make up the results they need, and then plug the conclusions into the rest of the analysis, that is the mystery meat of all of the Ryan/House GOP revenue projections.
jl
@Mark S.: Or some old guy he has to have the cops drag out of one of is ‘pay per view’ district town hall meetings.
JPL
@Mark S.: What do you mean.. he has foreign policy experience cuz he “voted for the Iraq war”…
also, too.. he really said that.
Mike E
@Redshift: Just have an nice “you’re mad, I’m leaving” line saved up in case ‘sploding winger gets a twisted panty. They tend to fuel their rage off of you, umm, being there and all, so the quicker you disengage and leave with the least amount of reaction to they’re antisocial behavior, the better.
I canvassed for 15 years, and you can never plan for the moment when some jerk can sense when you’re ripe for a tweaking (long day, series of lesser but increasingly annoying jerks leading up to that door) but you can certainly take breaks to keep yourself sane before getting to that point. Quality over quantity.
Cargo
I don’t think we’re even remotely close to Romulus Augustulus yet. We’re more just heading into our Crisis of the Third Century.
When we start seeing a succession of presidents coming up from the military, we’ll know we’re in the thick of it.
AlladinsLamp
And just what part of “dynamic scoring” do you people not understand?
AHH onna Droid
@dmsilev: I’ve been reading Defying Dixie (2008) and the author asserts that the laissez-faire “New South” plan dates to the period of Southern industrialization. It didnt work then, either.
dance around in your bones
OK, for all you ‘youngies’ out there, here the original(ish) David Bowie video.
I wasn’t a total fan, but some of his stuff gets better with age.
Like everything, I guess.
cynn
I’m sure it’s already been said, but
Shorter Romney/Ryan: “You have to vote for our policy to see what’s in it!”
cynn
I’m sure it’s already been said, but
Shorter Romney/Ryan: “You have to vote for our policy to see what’s in it!”
Caz
There was a surplus during Clinton’s tenure because they cut spending. It had nothing to do with taxes. Cutting spending results in surpluses.
That’s a fact. That you don’t realize it means you’re either lying or severely misinformed.
TenguPhule
Not when you cut revenues more then you cut spending.
But keep on fucking that chicken to keep the math voodoo ghosts away Caz.
Mark S.
@Caz:
cough
A Ghost To Most
Don’t know if this was intentional, but it surely fits.
Untied, indeed.
El Cid
THERE IS ONLY ONE SIDE TO A BUDGET THE SPENDIN’ IT DON’T MATTER HOW MUCH MONEY YOU TAKE IN ‘CAUSE MATH IS GAY AND COMMUNIST
priscianusjr