But, what about the Republicans? Well, they have a long history of being enablers and codependents. Remember, if you will, in 1982, President Ronald Reagan was promised $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes that the Democrats were asking for. The tax hikes took effect...spending cuts, no. When George H. W. Bush's famously pledged, "Read my lips: No New Taxes" in his run for the presidency, the Democrat-controlled Congress would have none of it. They demanded more tax money to feed their addiction. Not learning the lesson from his former boss, Bush finally relented to tax increases after being "promised" a $2 spending cut for every $1 in tax hike. And again...well you can guess what happened by looking at the chart above.
When faced with the fall-out from the inevitable housing bubble collapse, George W. Bush agreed to sign the "Porkulus" bill...without so much as a token promise from the Democrats...just because they said they had to have it. This bill provided spending to bail out "too-big-to-fail" Democrat cronies and to "create" jobs...jobs that Jeffery H. Anderson of The Weekly Standard reports were created or saved at "a cost to taxpayers of $278,000 per job." Anderson points out that, "the government could simply have cut a $100,000 check to everyone whose employment was allegedly made possible by the 'stimulus,' and taxpayers would have come out $427 billion ahead." And, to add insult to near-fatal injury, numbers from a recent report from Obama's own advisers show that "over the past six months, the economy would have added or saved more jobs without the 'stimulus' than it has with it."
And now the Spendocrats are telling us that the fiscal problems we have cannot be solved through spending cuts...again, I'll wait while you look at the chart...we have to raise taxes on the hated rich...those despicable owners of business jets and signers of paychecks. The problem is that the additional revenue gained from these proposed taxes, if any at all (see previous post), would make up about one-tenth of one percent of the current deficit. The question now is not whether the Democrats will overcome their serious addiction and cut spending, but rather will the Republicans stick to their stated principles and break their cycle of codependency.
Dr. Lawrence Lindsey was a former Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 1991 to 1997, and a Special Assistant to the President for Domestic Economic Policy during the first Bush Administration, among many other things. He was basically kicked out to the Bush administration for estimating the cost of the first Iraq war at $200B, which Donald Rumsfeld said was "Baloney" and the Office of Management and Budget said would only cost $60B. The true cost was over $1 Trillion. In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece Lindsey stated his belief that the true budget deficit is much higher than is currently being estimated by the Obama administration. "Underestimating the long-term budget situation," Lindsey said, "is an old game in Washington. But never have the numbers been this large." Lindsey says that "only serious long-term spending reduction in the entitlement area can begin to address the nation's deficit and debt problems. It should no longer be credible for our elected officials to hide the need for entitlement reforms behind rosy economic and budgetary assumptions."
My fear is that, like so many times in the past, the Republicans will cave-in and enable further deficit spending. And, as with so many addicts, I'm afraid the Democrats won't change their ways until we have hit rock bottom. I pray that I am wrong and that the Republican leadership finally gets some backbone.I guess we will know soon.
