The increasing disonnect in Washington DC

[bpwallace49]

Well written article . .

 

March of the Peacocks Sign in to Recommend By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

Published: January 28, 2010

Last week, the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, published an acerbic essay about the difference between true deficit hawks and showy “deficit peacocks.” You can identify deficit peacocks, readers were told, by the way they pretend that our budget problems can be solved with gimmicks like a temporary freeze in nondefense discretionary spending.

 

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

 

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One week later, in the State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a temporary freeze in nondefense discretionary spending.

 

Wait, it gets worse. To justify the freeze, Mr. Obama used language that was almost identical to widely ridiculed remarks early last year by John Boehner, the House minority leader. Boehner then: “American families are tightening their belt, but they don’t see government tightening its belt.” Obama now: “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.”

 

What’s going on here? The answer, presumably, is that Mr. Obama’s advisers believed he could score some political points by doing the deficit-peacock strut. I think they were wrong, that he did himself more harm than good. Either way, however, the fact that anyone thought such a dumb policy idea was politically smart is bad news because it’s an indication of the extent to which we’re failing to come to grips with our economic and fiscal problems.

 

The nature of America’s troubles is easy to state. We’re in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, which has led to mass job destruction. The only thing that’s keeping us from sliding into a second Great Depression is deficit spending. And right now we need more of that deficit spending because millions of American lives are being blighted by high unemployment, and the government should be doing everything it can to bring unemployment down.

 

In the long run, however, even the U.S. government has to pay its way. And the long-run budget outlook was dire even before the recent surge in the deficit, mainly because of inexorably rising health care costs. Looking ahead, we’re going to have to find a way to run smaller, not larger, deficits.

 

How can this apparent conflict between short-run needs and long-run responsibilities be resolved? Intellectually, it’s not hard at all. We should combine actions that create jobs now with other actions that will reduce deficits later. And economic officials in the Obama administration understand that logic: for the past year they have been very clear that their vision involves combining fiscal stimulus to help the economy now with health care reform to help the budget later.

 

The sad truth, however, is that our political system doesn’t seem capable of doing what’s necessary.

 

On jobs, it’s now clear that the Obama stimulus wasn’t nearly big enough. No need now to resolve the question of whether the administration should or could have sought a bigger package early last year. Either way, the point is that the boost from the stimulus will start to fade out in around six months, yet we’re still facing years of mass unemployment. The latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office say that the average unemployment rate next year will be only slightly lower than the current, disastrous, 10 percent.

 

Yet there is little sentiment in Congress for any major new job-creation efforts.

 

Meanwhile, health care reform faces a troubled outlook. Congressional Democrats may yet manage to pass a bill; they’ll be committing political suicide if they don’t. But there’s no question that Republicans were very successful at demonizing the plan. And, crucially, what they demonized most effectively were the cost-control efforts: modest, totally reasonable measures to ensure that Medicare dollars are spent wisely became evil “death panels.”

 

So if health reform fails, you can forget about any serious effort to rein in rising Medicare costs. And even if it succeeds, many politicians will have learned a hard lesson: you don’t get any credit for doing the fiscally responsible thing. It’s better, for the sake of your career, to just pretend that you’re fiscally responsible — that is, to be a deficit peacock.

 

So we’re paralyzed in the face of mass unemployment and out-of-control health care costs. Don’t blame Mr. Obama. There’s only so much one man can do, even if he sits in the White House. Blame our political culture instead, a culture that rewards hypocrisy and irresponsibility rather than serious efforts to solve America’s problems. And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable, if they choose — and they have so chosen.

 

I’m sorry to say this, but the state of the union — not the speech, but the thing itself — isn’t looking very good.

 

Summation . . . . we are all screwed . . . All politicans suck . .. .

[driveby]

...for the past year they have been very clear that their vision involves combining fiscal stimulus to help the economy now with health care reform to help the budget later.

 

On jobs, it’s now clear that the Obama stimulus wasn’t nearly big enough.

 

Stopped reading here.

[Azazello1313]

pretty ironic to see krugman talking about "deficit peacocks", when everything krugman himself advocates will only explode the deficit that much more. in any case, if krugman is this worked up about a spending freeze, it makes me that much more pleased the president is grabbing onto that mccain campaign plank.

[CaP'N GRuNGe]

Stopped reading here.

 

Krugman is consistent. From the begininning he said the stimulus wasn't nearly enough.

 

I think alot more people would be supportive of massive government spending in the short term if it was passed in a bill that also contained the concrete steps for spending cuts and tax increases to get our deficit under control in the long term.

[westvirginia]

Krugman is consistent. From the begininning he said the stimulus wasn't nearly enough.

 

I think alot more people would be supportive of massive government spending in the short term if it was passed in a bill that also contained the concrete steps for spending cuts and tax increases to get our deficit under control in the long term.

 

You know what grungie, you're absolutely right. If the stimulus hadn't just been a big public works project, it would have had more support and less people up in arms. For all the tripe about the heffalumps being the party of NO (and they have been), they've been pretty consistently ignored in their ideas - many of which (in HC) would definitely reign in costs. For all the obamessiah's verbal beating of the heffalumnps in their retreat, he hasn't pulled one single thing in from their plans to make them WANT to assist. He has to give them some ground to be able to say "Hey, we did get this done" when they go up again for re-election. As much as I hate the sausage making, the ugly comprise IS the way things are done. Instead, dems are buying votes to try and get things passed, which pizzes the electorate off.