At Least They're Consistent

[Guest guest]

http://www.buzzflash.com/carpenter/04/09/pmc04018.html

 

September 13, 2004

 

At Least They're Consistent

 

by P.M. Carpenter

 

On the heels of the Gingrich Revolution 10 years ago, President Bill

Clinton's budget director warned that Republicans' demagogic

" tax-cutting frenzy " would, if left unchecked by the White House,

" throw fiscal discipline to the winds, " be fed by " dishonest numbers "

and lead to " a bigger budget deficit. " Soon-to-be-Speaker Newt

Gingrich pooh-poohed the warning, bizarrely citing the Reagan

administration years that tripled the national debt as proof of the

proposition that " there's no question " his party's fiscal policies " do

work " in the pursuit of a balanced budget.

 

Five years later the Washington Post reported that Democrats were

painting presidential candidate George W. Bush's economic plan as " far

too expensive, " one that " would plunge the government back to the days

of deficit spending. " Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer responded

with this devastating, detailed fiscal analysis: Democrats " have an

ideological agenda and they torture the numbers to scream their

liberal creed. "

 

One year later, still on the campaign trail, Mr. Bush had taken to

flashing before audiences four one-dollar bills as representations of

the then-anticipated $4-trillion-plus federal surplus over the coming

decade. Each dollar symbolized about a trillion, he was fond of

saying, and under his economic plan one would go to protect Social

Security, one would go to increased spending, one would revert to

taxpayers – and one would help pay down the national debt. What's to

worry? Reaganomic merrymaking would bless our land once again,

unencumbered by its 1980s fiscal disasters and its contrary experience

of the 1990s.

 

Now comes the Congressional Budget Office's declaration of – what

else? – fiscal disaster. After 20 years of warnings and hard evidence

that contemporary conservative economics is firmly rooted in both the

Twilight Zone and dishonesty, the CBO's September 7 report was merely

one more confirmation. And what a confirmation it was.

 

Four-hundred-twenty-two billion dollars of record indebtedness this

year, said the CBO, which the White House – always the jokester –

hailed as good news. Well heck, it's less than the CBO projected in

March and only $47 billion more than last year's record deficit. That

was the administration's Twilight Zoneness of it all, leaving Vice

President Dick Cheney to spearhead the dishonesty of it all.

 

Dishonesty, in that Cheney declared the smaller-than-CBO-projected

deficit to be a " direct result of economic growth that came about as a

result of the tax changes that the president put through. " As the

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities put it, this is " demonstrably

incorrect. " Or as I would put it, the Vice Prez lied, since while in

office he's shown little intellectual slavishness to what is

demonstrably true. Quoting the Center and contradicting Cheney,

" Overall economic growth has been slightly slower than CBO expected

when it issued its $477 billion deficit earlier this year, " hence

" higher-than-expected revenues cannot have resulted from faster

growth. " In reality, the effects of inflation and $30 billion less in

unrealized taxpayer refunds chiefly accounted for the higher revenue.

 

And there was downright insulting dishonesty, in that Cheney and

cohorts were hustling the knee-slapper that the deficit was actually

falling. In listening to the V.P., one would never know the deficit

shot up by nearly $50 billion to a record level. The White House

primed the joke's punch line early in the year by vastly exaggerating

its own deficit projection, just to claim victory when the lower,

realistic numbers came in. As I wrote last February, " Quite aside from

the real and extensive problems inherent in crushing national debt,

this administration has added another problematic dimension: No one

can, or should, take seriously anything it says about budgets....

[W]e're likely witnessing a White House scam of deliberately

overestimating this year's deficit for ... political reasons. " I was

trying to play nice by adding the adverb, " likely. "

 

If you can't get enough of deficit spending, you're in luck, for the

CBO also forecasts annual deficits averaging $440 billion over the

next 10 years – and then the real trouble starts, assuming Bush

permanently cements his tax cuts. But let us not even think about

that. It tempts downer-overload.

 

Does the White House have its head in the sand, hoping against hope

that deficit woes will somehow alleviate? Of course not. It well knows

the adversity its economic approach has wrought in the past and of the

fiscal train wreck that lies ahead. It just hopes you don't.