Why Republicans Really Love Budget Deficits

[DonViejo]

By BRUCE BARTLETT, The Fiscal Times
May 10, 2013

Contrary to popular belief, Republicans don’t hate budget deficits. On the contrary, they love them. When they occur on the Democrats’ watch, they provide Republicans with endless talking points on how they are bankrupting the country and will inevitably lead to high inflation and interest rates. This is good for Republicans, politically, because rich people, the elderly and other core elements of the Republican coalition get scared and give lots of money to Republican candidates.

In office, of course, Republicans care nothing about the deficit. They cut taxes willy-nilly, sharply raise defense spending and start wars if necessary to justify it, create huge numbers of pork barrel projects, and enact massive new entitlement programs such as Medicare Part D, all while asserting that they are the party of fiscal responsibility.

When a Democratic administration such as that of Bill Clinton comes along that actually is fiscally responsible, Republicans change the subject and talk about something else. As at least some of us remember, Clinton inherited a budget deficit of 4.7 percent of the gross domestic product from the George H.W. Bush administration in 1992. By the year 2000, Clinton had turned that deficit into a budget surplus of 2.4 percent of GDP.

Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2013/05/10/Why-Republicans-Really-Love-Budget-Deficits.aspx#tkcsxVvOr5VQXZZV.99

[House of Roberts]

1. Medicare Part D isn't really an entitlement program

so much as a massive no-bid contract to supply pharmaceuticals to Medicare.

[bemildred]

2. It's a Congress sanctioned racket, nothing less, there is no other reason for it to exist except

to suck up to drug companies in return for campaign money.

[Jamaal510]

3. This is why Republicans shouldn't be called "conservative".

Real conservatives CONSERVE things, whether it's the environment, jobs, or money. Everything the GOP has been doing has been to the contrary; opposing environmental regulations, opposing jobs bills, and increasing the deficit when in office. All they are is regressive, not conservative.

[Dragonfli]

4. It's about starve the beast to them, always was, Bill Clinton worked with Gingrich

To achieve some actual beast killing such as welfare deform, plus they had common goals such as bank deregulation.

The bargains were struck and both parties allowed the budget to be temporarily balanced, they also took equal credit for it if in the house if you remember correctly (and still do as evidenced by Joey the Scab whenever he can find a way to bring up the balanced budget of the nineties).

Once the Republicans got from Clinton cuts to social programs (the main reason for starve the beast in the first place) plus some super great bank deregulation, they did what Republicans have been doing since Reagan, proceeded to massively cut taxes to increase the deficit again in order to starve more of the beast in the future.

Like clockwork, the right wing centrists in our party found another bank friendly Democratic President (they found two such centrists and let us pick one actually) to slay more of the Social Welfare "beast" they hate so much on the bipartisan altar of deficit reduction, this time via a new "grand bargain" to deform SS and Medicaid but with less actual tax increases than last time.

The centrists, the Republicans, the Kochs, and Peterson's groups fucked it up, they brainwashed too well and too many of the racist bircher style idiots and can't get them to go along with the program.

They all keep trying, but so far are not getting Clinton/Gingrich results like last time - it's funny really, the astroturf right are being Kochblocked by their own racist frankensteins monster. The Centrists and the right keep trying to make a beast slaying bargain happen but they can't get it by the Birchers and libertarians they stirred up to help make it happen.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. Republicans should be banned from holding office