Rhetorical question of the day: why does it take a blogger to put in plain English what every Democratic politician should be saying but that none of them can? Kevin Drum hits the nail on the head today:
[E]veryone who looks seriously at federal spending for more than a few minutes knows perfectly well that the vast majority of spending goes to four things: Social Security, Medicare, national defense, and interest. Unless you propose large cuts in those programs, you just aren’t serious about “small government.”
And of course no one will ever propose serious cuts in those programs. Interest payments are untouchable for obvious reasons, and the other three are all highly successful and highly popular programs. Not only won’t they be cut, but demographic and other pressures ensure that all of them will grow considerably over the next couple of decades and everyone knows it.
It’s this that makes modern Republican fiscal policy so deeply cynical and abhorrent. The leadership of the pary knows perfectly well that spending won’t be cut because they’d be kicked out of office instantly if they tried it. At the same time, they also know that their tax cuts will produce extremely damaging long term deficits. But they don’t care because the damage won’t become apparent until they leave office.
While hardly a unique insight, this point is worth reiterating, particularly given David Brooks’ disengenuous piece on the Bush tax policy in today’s Times. (See Josh Marshall and Noam Schieber for a good retort). The RNC’s revisionism is in full gear, painting tax cuts as a desperate ad-hoc measure for a recessionary economy, when in fact they were planned all along and when their stimulus has been about as ineffecient as possible.
Of course, one of the reasons that the damage fiscal policy is causing is not apparent is that no one is pointing it out in a way that’s easy for the non-expert to understand. There’s plenty of blame to go around for that, but we could hope for Democratic leadership that would see a role as explainer and popular polemicist. More than any ideological stance, I think the DNC’s worst legacy has been its retreat from arguing ideology in the public arena head-on. The excess and defeat of Howard Dean-ism notwithstanding, it’s time to reverse that.
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