Krugman on the Deficit

The budget deficit poses an interesting political economy problem for the Democrats. During the Clinton years, the party committed itself to a program of fiscal discipline and balanced budgets. As a long-term strategy for managing the country's economy, this seems to me to have been a good one. But as Paul Krugman writes, "it’s now clear that while Rubinomics made sense in terms of pure economics, it failed to take account of the ugly realities of contemporary American politics." In particular, the politics of fiscal restraint have turned out to be a shell game. Ronald Reagan comes into office and cuts income taxes. The results, huge and incredibly acute deficits. Then along comes Alan Greenspan and his Social Security commission. They raise FICA taxes (which fall much more heavily on the middle- and working-classes than do income taxes) over and above what's actually needed to finance Social Security in order to "pre-fund" the system.

In practice, this merely allows the non-Social Security portions of the budget to remain in steep deficit thanks to Reagan's combination of income tax cuts and defense spending hikes. Then Bill Clinton comes into office, and raises taxes and restrains spending growth in order to get the budget under control. Then along comes George W. Bush who promptly cuts income taxes again, leading to the re-explosion of deficits. Krugman again: "With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that conservatives who claimed to care about deficits when Democrats were in power never meant it. Let’s not forget how Alan Greenspan, who posed as the high priest of fiscal rectitude as long as Bill Clinton was in the White House, became an apologist for tax cuts — even in the face of budget deficits — once a Republican took up residence."

Thus, I agree with Krugman's conclusion. The country can live with modest-sized deficits even if it might be better to live without them. Democrats should try to avoid increasing the budget deficit, but shouldn't expend their time, energy, or political capital on reducing it either: "By spending money well, Democrats can both improve Americans’ lives and, more broadly, offer a demonstration of the benefits of good government. Deficit reduction, on the other hand, might just end up playing into the hands of the next irresponsible president."

Comments

It really won't matter what the next President does if he (she) is a Democrat. They'll be so wrapped up staving off faux finance and sex controversies whipped up by Fox News and Regnery Publishing there won't be time to govern effectively.

Posted by: steve duncan on December 22, 2006 09:52 AM

I'm glad to see that this attitude is shared by some people among the elite left, as opposed to just little old me.

As for the Media - I am usually not a blog triumphalist, but I really am beginning to wonder whether the pundit classes have lost enough credibility that few people pay attention to them. I mean, the press really did not push the Democrats in the last election, and we performed incredibly. It seems like people are finally beginning to ignore them a little (maybe?).

Posted by: MDtoMN on December 22, 2006 09:56 AM

If that is the case, this would strike me as a substantially irresponsible policy.

Politics aren't static, they re dynamic and they re driven by momentum. A party which declares that it doesn't care for fiscal responsibility and adopts a position of supposed benign neglect on deficits is bound to move the other way toward fiscal recklessness.

Moreover, once you adopt the line about "spending money well", it's not to far from having it established as the unquestioned orthodoxy that provides the umbrella for all kinds of hare-brained schemes the same way that Republicans did with the all-encompassing logic of cutting taxes.

Posted by: Nick Kaufman on December 22, 2006 09:57 AM

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that conservatives who claimed to care about deficits when Democrats were in power never meant it.

And, with the benefit of foresight, it's clear that liberals who claimed to care about deficits when Republicans were in power never meant it either.

Oh, the hypocrisy!

Posted by: Al on December 22, 2006 10:07 AM

How quickly can I change my party registration from Dem to Independent?

Posted by: Tim on December 22, 2006 10:16 AM

> How quickly can I change my party registration
> from Dem to Independent?

I felt sorry for Brad DeLong when he wrote that post, in the same way I feel sorry for many of my friends/classmates who are Regular Army. In both cases, they spent the most productive years of their lives building an organization and accomplishing things that they believed in. Only to find out over the last 6 years (and the Army is just starting to come to this realization) that they were played for big-time chumps by Cheney, Norquist, and the neocons.

Just as the victims of any big-time con (ala _The Sting_) must feel an incredible, unerasable sense of stupidity and self-doubt in the core of their souls for the rest of their lives, these smart, dedicated, hard-working people who burned their lives setting up the triumph of the neocons must at this point realizez they they will never escape the sense of needing the kick themselves in the butt for the rest of their lives.

And make no mistake: the neocons have achieved 90% of what they set out out accomplish via the W Bush Administration. They may well get another 8% when the Democratic President elected in 2008 implodes due to the unmanagable mess the Radicals will leave behind. They might even get to see Jeb inaugurated in 2013.

Remind me again why exactly they trusted Greenspan? Why they trusted Wall Street? Because those guys are really on the side of the average American, oh yeah.

So if you want to change your party affiliation I understand. But think about how we got to where we are, first.

Cranky

Posted by: Cranky Observer on December 22, 2006 10:31 AM

What a dissappointment to see Democrats adopting the Republican "starve the beast" strategy.

OK, social programs, health care, investing in education and infrastructure, ... all good. We should do them, but only as far as we can afford to, and not farther. The Johnson/Nixon social spending deficits were a mistake.

Posted by: liberalgoodman on December 22, 2006 10:49 AM

It has not happened yet, but at some point the structural federal deficit will do great harm to the private economy.
At that point the starve the beast advocates will claim that the only solution is to destroy the government -- their objective. Unless the liberal objective has become the same Krugman is now playing into the hands of the starve the beast advocates with this proposed policy.

Posted by: spencer on December 22, 2006 11:01 AM

we need to differentiate between what makes sense when you control congress but not the presidency and when you control congress and the presidency.

from the standpoint of only controlling congress, paygo is a return to fiscal responsibility even if it doesn't lower deficits yet. bush can, after all, sustain a veto, so passing a fiscally sound package, which requires raising taxes, is a non-starter anyhow for the next two years.

but budget deficits of the scale of the current general fund's are not sustainable without a price to be paid, and if democratic congressional control the next session combined with bush's determination to tar the republican party for a generation as the idiots who got us stuck in iraq and who can never be trusted to unleash their jejune tendencies in the oval office again leads to a democratic president in 2009, then a more sustained return to fiscally responsible policies, inclusive of a tax policy that matches our spending policies, is a must.

Posted by: howard on December 22, 2006 11:05 AM

No, no, no, no. I usually agree with Matt and even more often with Krugman, but this is lunacy.

The idea that we should not follow good policies--"As a long-term strategy for managing the country's economy, this seems to me to have been a good one"--because then people who don't have what we think are good polices will take advantage of and subvert our efforts is preposterous on its face. It is infantile and destructive: The other party only abuses our efforts, so let's not try to enact the best policy we can. Grow up.

I am cynical and can understand cynicism, but this is just dumb. The Democrats should seek to implement the policies they think are best for the country, and if the electorate does not reward them, then the country deserves to suffer. What else can you say? "The common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." - Mencken.

Maybe the Dems should do a better job of showing why the Republican policies are hurting the country and theirs are helping.

This "our policies aren't the best but they're better than the other party's, and it's all their fault anyway" attitude is why I don't vote Dem. Better than awful is not good enough. This thinking disgusts me.

Posted by: Mitch Schindler on December 22, 2006 11:06 AM

"What a dissappointment to see Democrats adopting the Republican "starve the beast" strategy."

Whoa, no, that's the exact wrong conclusion to draw. Moving deficit reduction to a second- or third-tier priority is one of the simplest ways of slipping out from under the "starve the beast" strategy. I hope the Dems don't become as irresponsible as the GOP demonstrably IS, but it's pretty clear that Norquist logic depends on playing Democratic fiscal integrity against traditional Democratic constituencies. Also, maybe I'm wrong here, but slavish devotion to budget balancing always seems to give Wall Street and the financial industry a veto that few other constituencies have.

Posted by: sglover on December 22, 2006 11:08 AM

"This "our policies aren't the best but they're better than the other party's, and it's all their fault anyway" attitude is why I don't vote Dem. Better than awful is not good enough. This thinking disgusts me."

You must have a hard time buying consumer goods, because although there are lots of nifty things out there, I notice that few of them offer precisely what I want. For instance, not all of them come in the colors I like. Why buy anything if it isn't perfect?

All that MY is really saying is that 1) it's time to reconsider the dogma that balanced budgets should always be the central priority, and 2) Dems should learn from experience, and not get played for suckers again. This is not at all the same as saying, "set the U.S. Mint's printing presses on 'turbo' and let's roll". If we had a political system like, say, Norway, we might be able to count on one party's fiscal sobriety being reciprocated by the other's. But anybody who's been paying attention for the last 25 years knows that we don't have a political system like that.

Posted by: sglover on December 22, 2006 11:24 AM

> because then people who don't have what we think
> are good polices will take advantage of and subvert
> our efforts is preposterous on its face. It is
> infantile and destructive: The other party only
> abuses our efforts, so let's not try to enact
> the best policy we can. Grow up.

Nice sentiment. Might have agreed with it up to, oh, 2003 or so.

But when you climb into the boxing ring expecting to participate in a clean fight "according to Hoyle - may the best man win", then are driven back into the corner by repeated punches below the belt, and finally see your opponent slip an iron bar out of the pocket of his trunks...

How long do you take that? Do you just stand there and get hammered into the ground with that bar of iron, perhaps dying in the process? How much abuse do you take in the name of good sportsmanship?

Is the person who objects to the abuse being "infantile" - or the person who stands there and watches while the other side abuses and then laughs at the rules?

Cranky

Posted by: Cranky Observer on December 22, 2006 11:26 AM

"And it's a sign of our degraded fiscal state that the Bush administration actually boasted about a 2005 budget deficit of more than $300 billion, because it was a bit lower than the 2004 deficit. It all sounds unsustainable. And it is." -- Paul Krugman, February 13, 2006

I guess that, while the budget deficit is "unsustainable", actually doing something about it now is a bad idea. Let's hear it for the party of responsibility!

Posted by: Al on December 22, 2006 11:30 AM

How about if we rack up surpluses by running taxes on the super rich up to 60 or 70%? We can also try to single out Republican industries for punishing targeted taxes - the energy sector, the insurance companies, etc. (We can try to put health insurers out of business entirely.) That could solve both problems - balancing the budget with a cushion against future Republican theft, while at the same time using the issue to maximize political advantage.

Posted by: JP on December 22, 2006 11:35 AM

I guess that, while the budget deficit is "unsustainable", actually doing something about it now is a bad idea. Let's hear it for the party of responsibility!

Kill parents, orphan, mercy of the court, etc.

Posted by: JP on December 22, 2006 11:36 AM

i can see that Al is going to enjoy being in the minority party so that he can criticize dems for not immediately fixing every republican disaster, but still, let's remember where the budget originates: that would be the white house.

bush is welcome to do something about the deficit now: he can either go ahead and cut spending to match his favored tax rates or he can raise tax rates to match actual spending. which one do you intend to encourage him to do, Al?

Posted by: howard on December 22, 2006 11:37 AM

there's an important piece of foudnational evidence that supports the policy advice Krugman is giving (he probably doesn't mention it because of space constraints), but here it is: today's deficits just aren't that bad, and, they're not that bad for the next 10 years, either, even but especially if a good portion of the Bush tax cuts are not extended.

Dems (and other Bush critics) have become way too addicted to the easy critique of Bush's fiscal irreponsibility, and, Krugman is arguing that this easy critique could end up boxing in Democrats' options when the time comes for them to run things.

Essentially, if good portions of the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire we're looking at deficits at less than 2% of GDP for the next 10 years (very roughly) - this is not a disaster. In fact, i'd argue that it's just about right in level, if not composition. But, given that what i know about deficits comes from having an office near Max Sawicky, i may have been infected with a bad case of deficit dovishness.

Still, any serious examination of this really doesn't justify the level of angst regarding Krugman's column that i see in this comments section. In substantive, not just political, terms, the deficit doesn't deserve the first claim on new resources.

joshb

Posted by: joshb on December 22, 2006 11:41 AM

This is why I can't understand why you ever treat Al with any respect, howard, whether on sports threads or anywhere else. The guy is a willful, self-conscious, intentional liar. He already understands that you're right. He just doesn't care.

Posted by: JP on December 22, 2006 11:42 AM

> The guy [the "Al" persona is a willful,
> self-conscious, intentional liar.

I think the evidence is fairly clear that the Al persona is construction of the Radical Counter-Blogging Project. "He" does not actually exist, and at this point I suspect they have a fairly sophisticated AI system generating rough drafts of his posts for final polishing by the counter-blogging team.

Cranky

Posted by: Cranky Observer on December 22, 2006 11:54 AM

I'm with sglover, Krugman, and Matt, all of whom I understand to be saying that reducing the deficit is important, but not at the expense of other ongoing needs, especially since there are political and practical costs to a more draconian approach. In principle, I'm against using personal-finance metaphors in discussions of the national budget, but the truth is that there are many smaller and more immediate expenses (car repairs, orthodontia, whatever) we take care of before reducing our overall consumer debt or paying off our mortgages, even though the latter would make us wealthier quicker. And while Krugman seems a bit cynical, he's right that Democrats didn't get any extra credit for extra efforts on the deficit-reduction front.

Posted by: latts on December 22, 2006 01:02 PM

I agree with the analysis, but disagree with the conclusion.

Just because the Republicans have shown complete disregard for the welfare of the nation is not a reason for the Democrats to do the same. The lesson we should learn from the last 6 years is that the Republicans will sacrifice everything to benefit their narrow base whenever they take power. The obvious recourse is to make that narrow base pay for the damage. It is clear that we need to jack up taxes on the wealthiest not just to undo the damage of the Bush years, but also to create a buffer for the damage the next un-American plutocrat will do. The mistake Clinton made was his attempt at fairness. By raising taxes on some middle class people, he gave them common cause with the wealthy. Good governance and fairness is not politically feasible. Good governance is not a luxury; fairness is. Fairness has to go.

The deficit does matter. More importantly, the national debt matters. It is vital that the national debt be paid down significantly before the Social Security system starts paying out more than it takes in.

When the general fund started borrowing from the trust fund, it was assumed the money would be repaid primarily from income taxes. Essentially, the middle class (hit harder by payroll taxes) has been subsidizing the rich (hit harder by income taxes). Eventually, that will reverse. The rich will have to pay back the middle class. Income will be taxed to pay back the trust fund. If there is also significant general fund debts from other sources, there will be too much political will to compromise. Instead of paying off the trust fund debt by taxing the rich, the middle class will take a hit, "just to be fair".

Class warfare is when the middle class and poor shoot back. It is a given that the rich never stop shooting.

Posted by: Njorl on December 22, 2006 01:05 PM

JoshB,

As I said earlier, the problem isn't economic, it's political. The country can live with 2% deficits. But once the political taboo is broken, the pressure would be tremendous to push deficits higher than that.

Posted by: Nick Kaufman on December 22, 2006 01:37 PM

A couple thoughts on this subject:

* Today's deficits just aren't that bad relative to GDP.

* The Dems always want to blame the deficits on tax cuts, but their cause seem to be rooted in the fact that the Republican gov't is spending like a bunch of "drunken sailors".

* I'm not a Dem, but I seriously doubt they would pursue a deficit reduction policy if they ran the legislative and executive branches. All this talk of reducing deficits is just the talk of an opposition part.

* Wasn't there a republic congress when Clinton started running balanced budgets? Didn’t the play a part in this? (Unlike the Internet where is was all Al Gore and companies like Sun, Cisco, etc. had nothing to do with it.)

* All in all, I'd love to see balanced budgets again, but I think it's the exception, not the norm, of future gov't.

Posted by: Dan on December 22, 2006 01:39 PM

The way out of this is to pass some version of a balanced budget amendment to the constitution (perhaps one that demands the budget be balanced over some multiple year time cycle, to allow some scope for fiscal policy). Otherwise we will continue to see at least moderate deficits, and periodic massive raids on the public credit card for constituency groups.

Posted by: MQ on December 22, 2006 02:03 PM

On the one hand, I think there’s a good deal of factual evidence to support the case Krugman is making. On the other hand the conclusion makes me pretty uncomfortable….it really does come close to being a liberal version of the ‘starve the beast’ theory, in that it smacks of being a kind of intellectual fig leaf: a too-clever argument used to justify a politically opportunistic short term strategy, even though it may come at the expense of achieving long term goals.

Krugman ends his column by saying, “In the long run, something will have to be done about the deficit. But given the state of our politics, now is not the time." But if now isn’t the time, when will it be? At a minimum, we need to have some sort of strategy to change the state of politics so that doing the right thing eventually becomes possible.

A couple of subsidiary points:

1. The case for activist government can only be politically successful if the public sees government as generally competent and able to accomplish things. A government that chronically engages in deficit spending will tend not to be seen that way.

2. When/if a serious deficit crunch comes, the resulting policy response isn’t likely to be an economically rational one. Spending on the poor will probably be the first thing that gets cut, because these programs that have the least active and mobilized constituency to support them.

Posted by: RC on December 22, 2006 02:12 PM

**** Wasn't there a republic congress when Clinton started running balanced budgets? ********

Yes there was. Does the name "Newt Gingrich" ring any bells with you? Newt threatened to shut down the US government unless Clinton went along with Republican "no new taxes" (deficit spending) policies. Clinton refused to capitulate and Gingrich then carried out his shut-down-the-government threats two or three times. But the public backed Clinton's efforts towards a balanced budget over Gingrich's lower taxes policies.

Here's the important point vis-a-vis Matt's original issue (deficit spending is ok). Clinton inherited a sagging economy from Bush Senior -- but Clinton's efforts to improve the economy only began to pay off after the stand-off with Gingrich.

This is important because the lesson is that Wall Street and US business, in general, will not invest in the US economy during times of large deficit spending. Businesses learned the hard way in the late '70s and early '80s that unsound fiscal policies create unpredictable and unacceptable economic consequences. Intelligent and informed business people learned not to invest in new jobs, factories and/or products during times of unsound government ficsal policy.

After the Clinton-Gingrich wars, Wall Street realized that Clinton's desire to move toward a balanced budget was more than just empty political rhetoric. In turn, confidence in the future of the US economy returned with a vengence. Businesses were once again willing to invest in the US. The economy soared.

And it will soar again -- but not until and unless -- we get political leaders willing to commit to sound fiscal policy.

Posted by: Steve on December 22, 2006 02:32 PM

Steve: I think Newt and Clinton found a common ground; I don't think it was a matter of Clinton pushing balanced budgets against a Republican opposition. Either way, I agree with most of you other points.

One thing that seems to get glossed over when there's a political discussion about this era: the impact of the Internet on the economy. This was a game changing technology that helped drive investment, productivity and growth.... and huge tax receipts.

To Matt's point: I agree. Deficits are OK if they're at a manageable level relative to GDP and they're not causing interest rates to soar. Both seem to hold true with the current deficit level.

Will the Dem's win political points by addressing the deficit? I doubt it. Matt’s point seems to be spot on.

Posted by: Dan on December 22, 2006 02:56 PM

* Today's deficits just aren't that bad relative to GDP.
True, but the debt is. In my opinion, a balanced budget isn't good enough. We are not really in a time of crisis. We should be paying down our debts. If we can't do it now, when can we do it?

* I'm not a Dem, but I seriously doubt they would pursue a deficit reduction policy if they ran the legislative and executive branches. All this talk of reducing deficits is just the talk of an opposition part.

They did last time.

* Wasn't there a republic congress when Clinton started running balanced budgets? Didn’t the play a part in this? (Unlike the Internet where is was all Al Gore and companies like Sun, Cisco, etc. had nothing to do with it.)

The Democrats sacrificed their congressional majority to pass the tax hikes that made the surplusses possible. Trying to give credit to the Republicans, who did all they could to break the budget, is just disgusting.

Also, nobody makes those stupid cracks about Al Gore and the internet anymore. They really just make you look like an idiot.

Posted by: Njorl on December 22, 2006 02:59 PM

Steve, the deficit started a decline under Bush I, which increased with Clinton's first budget. By the time that Gingrich and the GOP Congress came along, the path was set, and didn't change that much. And the changes were made with the opposition of the GOP members of Congress.

Another good reason to refuse to play the GOP economic game - they can't be trusted, even with history. Let alone the future.

Posted by: Barry on December 22, 2006 03:05 PM

Posted by: Njorl: "Just because the Republicans have shown complete disregard for the welfare of the nation is not a reason for the Democrats to do the same."

No. However, it is a very good reason to distrust them, and to refrain from assuming that Democratic efforts to do good would be allowed to come to fruition.


"The lesson we should learn from the last 6 years is that the Republicans will sacrifice everything to benefit their narrow base whenever they take power. The obvious recourse is to make that narrow base pay for the damage. It is clear that we need to jack up taxes on the wealthiest not just to undo the damage of the Bush years, but also to create a buffer for the damage the next un-American plutocrat will do. The mistake Clinton made was his attempt at fairness. By raising taxes on some middle class people, he gave them common cause with the wealthy. Good governance and fairness is not politically feasible. Good governance is not a luxury; fairness is. Fairness has to go.

The deficit does matter. More importantly, the national debt matters. It is vital that the national debt be paid down significantly before the Social Security system starts paying out more than it takes in.

When the general fund started borrowing from the trust fund, it was assumed the money would be repaid primarily from income taxes. Essentially, the middle class (hit harder by payroll taxes) has been subsidizing the rich (hit harder by income taxes). Eventually, that will reverse. The rich will have to pay back the middle class. Income will be taxed to pay back the trust fund. If there is also significant general fund debts from other sources, there will be too much political will to compromise. Instead of paying off the trust fund debt by taxing the rich, the middle class will take a hit, "just to be fair".

Class warfare is when the middle class and poor shoot back. It is a given that the rich never stop shooting."

I agree with most of this, except for the 'buffer' part - it's clear that GOP presidents can dish out far more red ink than the mainstream analysts and media would have predicted. If a GOP president was planning on increasing the debt by X, and is given a buffer of Y, they'll just go to X+Y.

Posted by: Barry on December 22, 2006 03:08 PM

Njorl: Nice. Love the hostility going to the idiot comment early!

Quick question on your comments...

"They did last time." - Was this under Carter, or LBJ? Which last time are you referring to?

"to pass the tax hikes that made the surpluses possible" - Do you really think it was the tax hikes that made the surplus possible? Or did they work in conjunction with a number of other factors, such as a booming economy (and no, the booming economy was not created by Clinton), fiscal restraint, etc?

Posted by: Dan on December 22, 2006 03:26 PM

Lots of intelligent, knowledgeable-sounding comments. But I'd have to side with RC, who says

"Krugman ends his column by saying, “In the long run, something will have to be done about the deficit. But given the state of our politics, now is not the time." But if now isn’t the time, when will it be? At a minimum, we need to have some sort of strategy to change the state of politics so that doing the right thing eventually becomes possible."

That last is a very good point to which I cannot even imagine an answer.

Is it worse to tax and spend, or to cut taxes and spend?

Posted by: Monty on December 22, 2006 04:21 PM

[b]Dan -- Re your comment -- "I think Newt and Clinton found a common ground; I don't think it was a matter of Clinton pushing balanced budgets against a Republican opposition." [/b]

The common ground was Newt agreed to cave in on his unsound economic demands. Clinton did not compromise.

[b]Barry -- Re your comment -- "the deficit started a decline under Bush I, which increased with Clinton's first budget. By the time that Gingrich and the GOP Congress came along, the path was set, and didn't change that much."[/b]

That's just not correct, the deficit did't begin to decrease under Bush Sr.; (see http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/) -- it was Clinton who started decreasing the deficit.

[b]Dan -- Re your parenthetical comment "(and no, the booming economy was not created by Clinton)"[/b]

Although Clinton didn't "create" the concept of sound fiscal policies in government, Clinton most certainly did implement the sound fiscal government policies responsible for the booming economy during his presidency.

Posted by: Steve on December 22, 2006 04:43 PM

The above link should be -- http://www.kowaldesign.com/budget/

Posted by: Steve on December 22, 2006 04:47 PM

Steve: I would replace "responsible for" with "that aided", but otherwise, I agree.

Posted by: Dan on December 22, 2006 05:06 PM

I'm not a Dem, but I seriously doubt they would pursue a deficit reduction policy if they ran the legislative and executive branches. All this talk of reducing deficits is just the talk of an opposition part.

And this is why this policy proposal is coming out. Clinton's economic policy was very strongly anti-deficit, and his administration had taken the drunken sailor deficit of the Reagan/Bush I years and turned it into a surplus.

And the Democratic Party's reward for this? Six years out of power.

There's no widespread political market for that kind of deadly serious economic policy. There's no political market in the US at this time for technocrats of the Robert Rubin cut. The Democrats are responding to the political reality that there are a lot of people like Dan that, opposed to all evidence and history, just don't believe that serious deficit reduction happened in the 90s or that it required a real commitment from the Democrats to accomplish (in the face of strenuous Republican opposition).

What is rewarded will be repeated. What is punished will be stopped. Dan, if you want deficit reduction, seriously consider examining your voting patterns.

Posted by: NBarnes on December 22, 2006 05:22 PM

"people like Dan that, opposed to all evidence and history, just don't believe that serious deficit reduction happened in the 90s or that it required a real commitment from the Democrats to accomplish (in the face of strenuous Republican opposition)."


I never said this or anything close to it! I argued that Clinton wasn't the only person responsible for the reduction and I argued that the deficit reduction was only a factor in the economic boom of the era, not the root cause.

Retract this statement now! :)

Anyone get the picture I'm bored at the inlaws?

Posted by: Dan on December 22, 2006 05:33 PM

Who was responsible for the deficit reduction of the 90s, Dan? Why do you believe that Democrats don't deserve repeat business based on their successes in that realm?

Bill Clinton and his Democratic administration was, by any sane measure, the people pushing for and responsible for implementing the financial policies that lead to the deficit reduction and elimination of the late 1990s. And, again, the Democratic Party's reward for implementing these policies and fighting quite hard for them in the face of passionate and rather nasty Republican opposition was six years out of power and a unified Republican government that pissed away what Clinton's administration had fought for away in every detail.

I am a partisan, but it quite honestly seem to me that on the subject of the US budget deficit, the facts are pretty one-sided. I'm not sure what perspective you take that leads you to disagree.

Posted by: NBarnes on December 22, 2006 09:50 PM

I think most of you guys need to read the op-ed. Krugman is not advocating starve the beast or large structural deficts. He's simply saying that the only way to achieve long-term deficit reduction is to a)enact good government reforms in the short term so the average Joe will see the benefit they recieve from paying taxes b) use the good government programs to sell the average Joe's on higher taxes in the medium-term and then c) use the higher taxes to reduce the deficit in the long-term. He is not advocating it because he like deficits. He is advocating it because he believes the evidence shows that a) reducing government programs and b) raising taxes to reduce the deficit in the short-term actually will lead to higher medium-term deficits because eventually someone will come along and convince Average Joe Government sucks and taxes are wasted. Average Joe will believe this because he doesn't see the effect of good government and without a deficit to tame no reason to pay taxes. Krugman believes that the long-term impact of the pendulum swing is more damaging to the economy than allowing a persistant but moderate deficit (to keep Average Joe on his toes) and delaying the reduction of the current massive deficit.

Posted by: PDog on December 22, 2006 09:54 PM

Yeah, let's understand something: Krugman isn't looking for Democrats to increase the deficit; he's looking for us not to cut it. The current system is one of yo-yo budgeting: big deficits for Republicans, big surpluses for Dems, allowing Republicans to come back and run 'em up again. But by keeping the budget at its current (im)balance, Democrats don't give Republicans the opportunity to come in and gut the tax base when they take power. So we won't make the problem better, but we won't make it worse. Republicans have been making it worse, and now they'll have to play nice, too, before the budget moves back toward balance.

Posted by: jhupp on December 22, 2006 10:28 PM

"Who was responsible for the deficit reduction of the 90s, Dan?"

As mentioned in a previous post: I think it was a compromise between Clinton and the Republicans (a balanced budget was a large piece of Newt's Contract w/America). Again, Clinton deserves credit, but recognize there were other interested in this policy as well.

I don't think the Democrats, as a party, are the party of balanced budgets. I definitely don't think it's the Republicans either; they've proven this a couple of time over my lifetime.

As a Libertarian, fiscal responsibility is important to me. While I don't advocate a tax and spend approach, I don't advocate Bush's approach either, where you cut taxed and increase spending.

The other thing that generally annoys me is this belief that Clinton's fiscal policies fueled the economic growth of the era. I'm a firm believer that presidents ride business cycles, not manage or create them.

Back to the Krugman article, our deficit today is manageable, and I agree that the Democrats aren't going to win points lowering it. This is an issue for them only while Bush pushes pour fiscal policies. Given the action of the Republicans as of late, the Democrats look like the party of fiscal responsibility but this isn't why Democrats get elected.

Posted by: Dan on December 23, 2006 12:47 AM

The deep problem here is that Republicans are completely and utterly opposed to good government. Playing games with spending isn't going to change or fix this. The only way long-term economic policy is going to get better is if the GOP can be completely wiped out as a political force. It's probably--probably--not necessary to send them all to gas chambers, but they do need to be permanently driven out of power. Either turn the GOP into a laughingstock or jerrymander them out of existence.

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