Republicans Cry Uncle On Spending ... When Cuts Hit Home (updated)

[ProSense]

Republicans Cry Uncle On Spending … When Cuts Hit Home

Brian Beutler

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With just a under a month until the deficit Super Committee must recommend policies that cut the 10 year deficit by $1.2 trillion, members of the Republican party — the same party that’s been on the war path for deep spending cuts, and that decries President Obama’s “failed stimulus” — are making uncharacteristic arguments against slashing spending. Trim too much, too quickly, they warn, and people will lose their jobs!

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“What’s more, cutting our military—either by eliminating programs or laying off soldiers—brings grave economic costs,” wrote Chairman Buck McKeon (R-CA) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week. “(I)f the super committee fails to reach an agreement, its automatic cuts would kill upwards of 800,000 active-duty, civilian and industrial American jobs. This would inflate our unemployment rate by a full percentage point, close shipyards and assembly lines, and damage the industrial base that our warfighters need to stay fully supplied and equipped.”

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“When you look at the defense cuts that are going to come as a result of the deficit control act and the caps on discretionary spending, I would argue that they’ve taken more than their fair share of the hits,” Boehner said. “When you look at what’s yet to be done by the Super Committee — almost all that’s going to fall in the area I think of mandatory spending. Which is more than two-thirds of the budget. And it’s time for us to do our work there.”

That sums up the GOP game plan pretty fairly. Still it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the only thing Congressional Republicans find more abhorrent than Keynesian economics is austerity for programs they like.

Updated to add this from Steve Benen:

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Remember, during the debt-ceiling crisis, Republicans needed to give Democrats a concession to resolve the standoff. They weren’t willing to put tax increases on the table, so GOP leaders agreed to a “trigger” that would impose harsh cuts on defense spending. The point was to create an incentive for both parties to reach an agreement — if Republicans didn’t want to slash the Pentagon budget, they’d have strike a bipartisan deal.

But as the chances of the super-committee reaching a compromise evaporate, Republicans are now confronted with the possibility that their own idea — massive defense cuts — might come to fruition. And what’s their response? Spending cuts will hurt the economy and cost jobs.

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[valerief]

1. The first clowns that s/b fired make up most of Congress. nt

[Zorro]

2. There's an end-of-the-month economic disaster in the making

Before the Republicans would vote for increasing the debt limit this past summer (to pay for programs they had already approved), they demanded that some method to cut the budget be included. Automatic cuts is the resulting mechanism they decided on if no agreement is reached by the bipartisan committee.

Now the chickens are coming home to roost. I see no real agreement being reached by the committee.

These automatic cuts will really cause a lot of pain. Brought to you by the Republican party.

[Kolesar]

3. The aerospace industry owns certain Congress members who appropriate useless weapons systems

...and spy satellites that the Pentagon leaders don't want. Newt Gingerich was no deficit hawk. He was a whore -- selling airplanes made by Lockheed in Georgia.

[Vattel]

4. The debt deal sucks. Republicans are primarily to blame, but

Democrats are also to blame. Obama should have insisted on a clean bill that raised the ceiling. The people would have backed him on that.

[Mz Pip]

5. Most of those are government jobs

The GOP should be happy at the prospect of eliminating more government jobs. :sarcasm:

[Tarheel_Dem]

6. K & R

:kick:

[Zorro]

7. The Republicans will get blamed for gutting the military

if the committee can't reach any agreement.

Hoisted on their own petard.

I do suspect that at the last second the Republicans will push for legislation rescinding the automatic cuts requirement.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. the public will blame Obama

people do not see beyond that

[ProSense]

8. Krugman:

Coalmines And Military Keynesians

Ah, so now we have a new principle of economics: government spending can’t create jobs, but cuts in government spending can destroy jobs — as long as the jobs are in the defense sector

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One thought here is that a Keynesian is an Austrian whose campaign contributors are about to lose a lucrative contract. But it also harks back to Keynes’s point, when he suggested burying bottles full of cash in disused coalmines, so that private enterprise could dig them back up and create jobs in the process:

It is curious how common sense, wriggling for an escape from absurd conclusions, has been apt to reach a preference for wholly ‘wasteful’ forms of loan expenditure rather than for partly wasteful forms, which, because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict ‘business’ principles. For example, unemployment relief financed by loans is more readily accepted than the financing of improvements at a charge below the current rate of interest; whilst the form of digging holes in the ground known as gold-mining, which not only adds nothing whatever to the real wealth of the world but involves the disutility of labour, is the most acceptable of all solutions.

That’s it exactly. Propose some kind of public investment, say in green energy, and the right screams “Solyndra! Waste! Fraud!” But propose spending the same amount on weapons that we don’t need, and it’s all good.

If only we could convince Republicans that solar power or mass transit were complete wastes, but that they would upset some foreign power — the French, that’s it! — a big stimulus program might sail through.