The 'Pledge': Deficits Are a Terrible Thing, Let's Make Them Bigger

Economist and NYT columnist Paul Krugman writes about the Republicans "Pledge to America:"

On Thursday, House Republicans released their “Pledge to America,” supposedly outlining their policy agenda. In essence, what they say is, “Deficits are a terrible thing. Let’s make them much bigger.” The document repeatedly condemns federal debt — 16 times, by my count. But the main substantive policy proposal is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which independent estimates say would add about $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade — about $700 billion more than the Obama administration’s tax proposals.

True, the document talks about the need to cut spending. But as far as I can see, there’s only one specific cut proposed — canceling the rest of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which Republicans claim (implausibly) would save $16 billion. That’s less than half of 1 percent of the budget cost of those tax cuts. As for the rest, everything must be cut, in ways not specified — “except for common-sense exceptions for seniors, veterans, and our troops.” In other words, Social Security, Medicare and the defense budget are off-limits.

So what’s left? Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math. As he points out, the only way to balance the budget by 2020, while simultaneously (a) making the Bush tax cuts permanent and (b) protecting all the programs Republicans say they won’t cut, is to completely abolish the rest of the federal government: “No more national parks, no more Small Business Administration loans, no more export subsidies, no more N.I.H. No more Medicaid (one-third of its budget pays for long-term care for our parents and others with disabilities). No more child health or child nutrition programs. No more highway construction. No more homeland security. Oh, and no more Congress.”

The “pledge,” then, is nonsense.

Krugman, after asserting that the Republicans, following the advice of neo-con Godfather Irving Kristol, will say anything to gain power, predicts what I wrote about a few posts ago:

The answer, presumably, is that it turns to its real, not-so-secret agenda, which mainly involves privatizing and dismantling Medicare and Social Security.

Realistically, though, Republicans aren’t going to have the power to enact their true agenda any time soon — if ever. Remember, the Bush administration’s attack on Social Security was a fiasco, despite its large majority in Congress — and it actually increased Medicare spending.

So the clear and present danger isn’t that the G.O.P. will be able to achieve its long-run goals. It is, rather, that Republicans will gain just enough power to make the country ungovernable, unable to address its fiscal problems or anything else in a serious way.

In other words, political paralysis is our national future for the short-term.

So what's the long-term? Whatever it is that happens when you don't address major national economic problems. National bankruptcy, economic dislocation, inflation and unemployment, increased poverty and human suffering, social upheaval (including protests, riots, crime), militaristic eruptions abroad (to distract the citizens from their problems at home), secession and national fragmentation? These are some possible consequences of not having effective political leadership that can govern.

But since a nation cannot ultimately tolerate such political chaos, a political strongman, a 'Caesar', will arise to bring 'law and order':  a Napolean (e.g. General David Patraeus), or even a Hitler. And once the Napolean or Hitler take power, our democracy will be history; only a farcical shell will remain, allowing the masses to think that we're still a government of, by, and for 'the people'.  But the reality will be gone.  (Who knows, given the non-responsiveness of the Washington Establishment to the problems we face, maybe it's gone already.)

That, it seems to me, is the result of the Republicans going off the 'deep end' and into an advanced state of absurdity (of which the Tea Party is just one example).  Will any remaining sane politician come along who can rescue the Republicans and the nation from their excursus into political craziness?  We shall see.  I keep scanning the horizen for the slightest cloud (for those who are biblically illiterate, that is a reference to the prophet Elijah and the end of the drought in Israel, found in I Kings 17-18).