The deficit in Republican thinking

Observations from watching too much politics on TV:

In a close race for Congress in a sprawling district that includes south suburban Chicago, young, handsome challenger Adam Kinzinger is but the latest to mouth a Republican talking point to explain why he backs renewing President Bush’s expiring tax cuts for the wealthy: The worst thing you can do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.

That boilerplate answer harkens back to the then radical philosophy of Depression-era economist John Maynard Keynes, a favorite of liberals. But Keynes did think there was one worse thing you could do: cut spending. Funny, Republicans skip over that detail. GOP rhetoric goes in the opposite direction: Reign in out-of-control spending now.

Keynes, by the way, believed government should reverse course in good economic times, by hiking taxes and paring expenditures. But Republicans subscribe to supply-side economic theory, which holds that you always cut taxes on the wealthy, whether the times are good or bad. One consequence is the ballooning of federal budget deficits during the last three Republican presidencies.

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It’s the top of the 9^th, and the score is 10-2 in the visitors’ favor. Even though your hometown team’s starting pitcher George Bush played disastrously, he was inexplicably kept in the game. Finally, with the bases loaded and nobody out, the manager yanks him and brings in the long, lean Barack Obama The new pitcher forces the first batter to pop up; no base runner advances. The second player strikes out. The third batter, however, hits a homer, a grand slam, pushing the score to 14-2,which ends up as the final score.

Now, ridiculously, some fans are grousing that Obama lost the game. Of course, under the sensible rules of baseball, the loss falls squarely on Bush.

Politics lacks such clear-cut rules, however. Thus, Dana Loesch – a conservative, St. Louis-based blogger and talker – says on Real Time with Bill Maher that Obama tripled the federal budget deficit in 2009 from the year before.

The deficit was a record $1.4 trillion in 2009, up from $459 billion in 2008. But if that record was Obama's doing, how come the accountants saw it coming well before he took office. Eventually, on Jan. 7, 2009 – two weeks before the Inauguration – the Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit of over a trillion dollars for the year. The office put a price tag on George W. Bush’s policies, not Obama’s campaign promises, to come up with the figure. The big budget busters: the tax cuts and two wars, along with the recession. Keep in mind, too, that 2009 actually refers to the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1, 2008, more than three months before Bush left office. (See analysis by Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.)

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Does anyone buy the Republican talking point that the congressional stalemate over tax cuts is creating uncertainty among businesses and is thus retarding the recovery? OK, I can see the uncertainty part. The fragile state of the economy itself, though, is surely fueling more uncertainty. But slowing the recovery? That’s a joke, right? The steepness of the hole the nation fell into is what's making the climb out a slog.

Obama is taking steps to reduce Bush’s impact on future budgets and thereby reduce future deficits. One such step is to let Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy expire. But Republicans (and some Democrats) won’t cooperate. Congress recessed without taking up the issue - lack of action that won't send the economy into a tizzy.

Further reading:

John Maynard Keynes’s open letter to President Roosevelt

Nice explanation of Keynesianism

Call Agent Mulder: Memories of Obama’s Christianity wiped out!

Remember that humongous hullabaloo not so long ago when candidate Barack Obama’s detractors were super-gluing him to his retired United Church of Christ pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, in the hope of gumming up the Illinois senator’s campaign for the White House?

There was much talk then about Obama’s longtime attendance at a church with a pastor who gave fiery, controversial sermons. Needless to say, the United Church of Christ is Christian – a major Christian denomination, in fact.

Well, memory of that episode has suddenly evaporated from the minds of many of Obama’s present detractors. What is he? Christian? Muslim? Hard to tell, they now say.

The ranks of the amnesiac include the Rev. Franklin Graham, who told CNN in effect that all he had to go on was Obama’s word that he was a Christian. Yes, he was quick to add, he had no choice but to believe Obama. The faithful caught the wink: You may exercise the choice not to believe.

Graham gave further comfort to these swallowers of tall tales, claiming Obama was born a Muslim – which would have been news to his agnostic mother and atheistic father. Yes, the senior Barack Obama grew up Muslim, but came to believe that religion was mere superstition, according to his son’s autobiography. What’s more, the elder Obama played little role in raising his son, having walked out of his life when he was 2.

Graham’s mealy mouthed words go a long way to explaining why outlandish myths persist about this president, as underscored by a recent poll showing a surprising growth in the share of Americans who buy the lie that Obama is Muslim – from one of every nine in March of last year to one of every five now, according to the Pew Research Center. Uncertainty grew, too. The share of Americans who say they don’t know to which religion Obama belongs shot up from 34% to 43%.

The growth testifies to the success of a campaign of disinformation being waged against Obama -- in the blogosphere, over talk radio and on Fox News. And instead of acting responsibly by dispelling the myths forthright, many leaders on the right, like Graham, are abetting the campaign.

There are bigger whoppers than the claim Obama is a Muslim. A huge, out-and-out lie with stubborn currency is the claim that Obama was not born in America and is not an American citizen – a fabrication Republican leaders have been loath to dispel.

Though the Rev. Graham doesn’t think so – he believes Islam is evil – describing Obama as Muslim would be OK if in fact he was. His enemies are trying to attach that false label to him, however, so that the prejudice that some Americans feel toward Muslims would redound on Obama.

Yes, the current anti-Obama narrative – that the president may be Muslim – contradicts an earlier one – that Obama was a longtime disciple of a mad Christian minister. But nobody seems to notice, much less care.