During this legislative foofooraw (or however that’s spelled) over the debt ceiling, I’ve been watching the right trying to resurrect the meme of the free-spending (once known as “tax and spend,” which I have since tried to explain is a good thing) Democrats, to be presumably followed by the laughable assertion that the Republicans are financially circumspect.
Yes, for those of paying attention over the last 25 years, this is a moment to pause and laugh out loud.
So here’s Erick Erickson joining the push:
Reconciliation will eventually happen. Democrats have to raise the debt ceiling to pay for all their spending.
Looking at it closely, it’s clear that this is wrong on a couple of levels.
- Raising the debt ceiling ultimately pays for nothing. The proper way to think about this is that it transfers the right to receive funds from the immediate supplier of a service, such as a road construction company, to a lender, such as an investor in Treasury Bills, by using funds provided by the lender to pay the supplier. Nothing is paid in terms of the government disbursing tax money to recipients. Only a promise to pay has been extended to an entity that can afford to not be paid in exchange for an interest rate on the lent money.
- The fact that the debt ceiling needs to be raised isn’t the exclusively the “fault” of either party. Keep in mind this is not a ceiling on annual deficits, but on the cumulative debt. Each party, and sometimes both (“bipartisan”) has taken action, mostly through legislation, to spend money on providing services and direct payments, ranging from Defense to Welfare, and those actions, when not paid for by raising taxes, shifting funding, raising fees, or abolishing other services, must then be “paid for” by borrowing money and paying suppliers or recipients using the borrowed funds. See 1.
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Source: St. Louis Fed.
So when Erickson derisively says “pay for all their spending,” it’s not entirely honest. Let’s take a single example out of his hide. The Tax Reform Bill of 2017, despite some hysterical (or hysterically funny) claims that it’s a historic achievement and that it worked, it did not work, as we can see on the right. Annual deficits are growing at an appalling rate, because the Republicans refused to pay for their corporate tax cuts in any way, believing with starry eyes that their political religious tenet of the Laffer Curve would replace the funds lost through tax cuts with funds generated by new economic activity enabled by the tax cuts. As both Democrats and third-party economists predicted, It Didn’t Happen. That gap in funds resulted in the Federal debt jumping upwards, with no end in sight, as the annual deficits accrued into the debt. Worse yet, when Democrats proposed raising taxes that had been dropped – you know, the responsible action – the Republicans in the Senate pretended to have a stroke and drop right there on the floor. Even when your Signature Legislation is an Out and Out Failure, you can’t let it be rolled back. Even fourth-rate politicians insist on being proud of their work, especially when it’s a failure.
- That all translates to Republicans have contributed substantially, maybe even more than Democrats, to this mess, and they refuse to clean it up by a bipartisan effort to raise taxes.
- The errancy of the word “fault” in this context deserves its own rant, from which I’ll desist at the present time.
But because Erickson will benefit by misleading his audience – by making them feel better for being conservatives, rather than miserably incompetent at governance – he walks down that road to his own personal Hell.
And it’s really too bad. I rather liked this point:
Now the progressives will kill the bipartisan infrastructure plan, which included some of what they wanted, because it is not enough. They will take no wins unless they can have all the wins. Zealots always prefer to live in hell if they can’t get Heaven exactly as they want it.
Erickson might not like the idea that McConnell, et al, are exactly the same as the progressives he’s criticizing – but it’s true. The current extremist Senator, which includes McConnell and most of the Senate GOP, does not and can not compromise, because that would violate the sacred requirements of being a Godly Senator. It would imply that they can be wrong, that, just maybe, God isn’t on their side.
And that’s just too appalling for the Republicans and, indeed, any zealot. But Erickson rather wrecks this good point by being misleading in other points, and is thus difficult to take seriously.
And if you’re puzzling over why the Democrats claim this is the Republicans’ fault, this is why. And it’s by and large accurate.
