Slash and burn

I'm with Dan on this one: I haven't seen a lot of Democratic enthusiasm for budget balancing this cycle.

Democrats like so say they favor balanced budgets, of course. They've invested the Clinton tax increase with nearly the same level of totemic power as Republicans have given to the Reagan tax cuts: it allows them to claim credit for a largely unrelated economic boom. But this is just something to say when you're bored. I see the candidates promising to spend all the money they claw back from the Bush tax cuts (which will be a couple of hundred billion between their first budget and the expiration of cuts), and more besides. This would seem to bely any serious interest in deficit cuttery. I don't know many progressives who would prefer deficit reduction to, say, national health care.

Comments

On the dark/bright side, Democrats always have grand spending schemes that get filibustered. But the tax cuts will just expire if there's a Democratic president.

Posted by Justin | September 12, 2007 11:37 AM

I think if you did a quick survey of democrats old enough to remember the '90s, you would find that almost all of them say something along the lines of: "We rebalanced the budget, defraying our desire for progressive programs to make this a more just and healthy society; we learned the lessons of the '80s, accepted the need to first moderate the deficit and reassure the investing class that we were responsible capitalists, not wacko socialists -- and for what? So that the GOP, the next time it got into power, could throw away the fruits of our fiscal discipline on a tax cut that sent hundreds of billions of dollars to the top 1%, and spend hundreds of billions more on a ludicrous military adventure which they then used to demonize us as unpatriotic. So the hell with it. Why should we be the fiscally responsible ones? Screw you; when we get back into power, we'll put taxes back where they were before, and we'll spend the money on those who deserve it, while we've got a chance to determine where it goes. You throw away over $100 billion a year on your pet war, and you expect us to show fiscal discipline on health care? Forget it."

I don't think democrats are hostile to deficit reduction as such. But a tremendous amount of ill will has been generated by the Bush tax cuts, and Republicans will have to pretty much forswear future tax cuts before they can expect Democrats to hold off on spending increases, this time around.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 12, 2007 12:09 PM

Brooksfoe: you have just presented yet another solid reason not to vote Dem, no matter how much one might want to sock it to Repubs. Of course with nationalization of healthcare being a real danger everything else kinda pales in comparison.

This, by the way, is not a particularly libertarian prospective, just a self-interested one.

Posted by ...Max... | September 12, 2007 12:24 PM

You throw away over $100 billion a year on your pet war, and you expect us to show fiscal discipline on health care?

And the reply comes back like a shot: "We've never expected you to show fiscal discipline on health care; I just hope we can restrain you a second time. By the way, how did you vote on 'our' pet war?"

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | September 12, 2007 12:37 PM

Vice President Cheney said that Reagan proved that
deficits do not matter.

If that is true why worry about the Medicare budget, we can just borrow to finance it.

The republican starve the beast strategy is proving to be about as successful as their invasion of Iraq.

Posted by spencer | September 12, 2007 1:20 PM

I think the lack of discussion about balanced budgets might be largely due to the fact that absent either: (a) a massive tax increase or (b) massive cut in discretionary spending, the ongoing cost of that major war we're fighting makes a balanced budget close to politically impossible.

Or maybe just "impossible" enough. Looking at it politically, I think progressives were for the balanced budget so long as it kept their allies in the White House and didn't affect their priorities too much. Where this wasn't the case, there was friction.

I don't think it is inconsistent to trumpet fiscal conservatism and at the same time advocate a course of action which would leave the country in better fiscal position if not with a balanced budget. To quote a phrase often used by the "other" Clinton, let's not make perfect the enemy of the good.

Posted by John C | September 12, 2007 1:30 PM

Two little things. First, that the 'Clinton' tax increase was really the Bush41/Clinton tax increase. Remember 'read my lips' and the resultant whining and whooping from the wingnuts when it became pretty obvious that higher gov't income would be helpful? And lots of generally nonpartisan stuff written around that time did, in fact, give those tax increases credit for the boom that (fortuitously--against all odds--because God has a sense of humor) followed.

Second, that maybe our present horse-and-buggy health care system actually represents a drain on our economy. (And for what it's worth on our society overall.) So that for example GM could quit spending more on health care than it spends on steel. And individuals presently locked in their (low productivity) jobs could be liberated to become inventers and entrempeneurs and other things that increase everybody's economic well being.

You know, liberal, pie-in-the-sky stuff.

Posted by JohnMcC | September 12, 2007 4:02 PM

brooksfoe is correct that the Bush 43 administration has done nothing to burnish deficit reduction in the eyes of Democrats, although Max's reflexive conclusion that that is a reason to vote Republican is mystifying. ("Well, Dr. A, your prescription of 10 mg of Zorfaxil daily is shockingly out of step with the latest medical authorities who recommend a dose of 15 mg, so I'm going to have to go with Dr. B who recommends that I have a good bleeding in order to restore the balance of my humors.")

A bit more seriously: It would cost something like $100b/year (+/- 50b) to put everyone under 25 and expectant mothers on Medicare, which is substantially less than what the war costs. If a Democratic president were ever to make that proposal, it is going to be very hard after Bush 43 to get Democrats to wring their hands over how can we possibly afford it. (I for one would propose that we plan to pay for that in exactly the same way we plan to pay for military spending, which is -- as Jim Henley so memorably pointed out -- that we make no plan at all and just hope things work out.)

Posted by alkali | September 12, 2007 8:50 PM

Yeah, health spending is actually a bad example; Democrats are the ones who want to save money (by giving Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices, by getting a European-style universal health care system that costs less than our system does, etc.). A better example might be education spending, mass transit spending, or one of those "Manhattan Project for clean energy" things that Thomas Friedman types are always proposing.

Posted by brooksfoe | September 12, 2007 11:55 PM

Given that existing Medicare is now over three decades into its Troop Surge, I can't quite see my way clear to accepting the "well, extending it would be cheaper than the war" argument. At least not unless someone can show me the exit strategy.

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | September 13, 2007 7:45 AM

"we'll spend the money on those who deserve it" is a telling quote from brooksfoe. Why does anyone "deserve" money? Thats absurd. Just because your uninsured does not mean you "deserve" anything. Now, it might be better for society that there not be anyone uninsured, but that has no bearing on whether someone deserves anything. And how does lowering taxes "send hundreds of billions of dollars to the top 1%"? No they have kept their hundreds of billions of dollars away from social planners who do not believe the top 1% deserve their own money.

Posted by carlton | September 13, 2007 4:08 PM

Indeed, why does anyone "deserve" anything? Why does the top 1% "deserve" "their" money any more than the uninsured "deserve" healthcare? How many of the top 1% really labored? Really? Or did they inherit wealth through no effort of their own? Does being wealthy make one more "deserving" of anything? I have my doubts as to whether one is more "deserving" than the other. I'm stuck, honestly. Although I understand greed is the single most powerful motivator in our economy, I always find great wealth morally suspect.

Posted by Some call me Tim | September 13, 2007 5:01 PM

Does it matter how anyone got what they got? Some Call Me Tim tries to have it both ways, by asking whether the top 1% ever labored answers the question for him, but so long as anyone has something that they did not break the law to get, whether through inheritance, working 100 hours a week, or winning powerball, one cannot say it is right to take it from them. In other words no one deserves anything from a government, but it is not immoral because someone wants to pass their wealth to their heirs, that is the whole point of accumulating wealth in the first place, anyways. Finally, the top 1% no more deserves healthcare then anyone else, but the 1% can pay for it in an open market.

Posted by carlton | September 13, 2007 5:38 PM

I remain mystified at the notion that the money one earns (or inherits, or in any way has legally accumulated) is one's own, and that the government -- i.e., the people of this country -- have no claim on it. This is the greatest wealth-creating society in the history of the world. Two hundred years of stable democracy, regulated and fair markets, vast natural resources, the interstate highway system, the greatest universities in the world, the FDA to keep us healthy, etc etc etc. -- all of this helps you make money, no matter what you do. No one makes a dime on his own -- this culture is your partner in absolutely everything you do. As Warren Buffet said (and I paraphrase): if he'd been born in the Sudan, with exactly the same talents and intelligence and ambition, he'd have made very much less money than he did. (A thousand a month? That much?) The difference is what he owes this country.

Taxes are not the confiscation of money that by rights belongs only to the taxed -- it's the partner's share. It's what the partner collects to keep this whole enterprirse going, at the level at which the citizens of this country want to keep it going. And it's hard to see that under the current levels of taxation the partner (i.e., the greatest wealth-creating culture in the history of the world) isn't getting a little less than its fair share.

"Fair," by the way, I would define as: the amount we need to pay our bills.

Posted by tribecan | September 13, 2007 6:26 PM

I remain mystified at the notion that the money one earns (or inherits, or in any way has legally accumulated) is one's own...

Thanks for the warning.

Posted by Paul Zrimsek | September 13, 2007 9:35 PM

Eased worker mobility makes for a more efficient economy - workers shift to where they're needed and market forces take place.

Having workers tied to jobs because of unrelated health benefits is economically inefficient. (If you want to institute work slavery, there are better ways).

There is a practical matter even in economic terms that people who get sick who then have to spend all their time worrying about paperwork, referrals, loss of job and other issues, have a much harder time getting well than those who can use benefits to recuperate. Now, I don't have research for this, but I do have personal experience of stress involved, and my guess is that huge stress does not help the recovery, and thus costs the economy significantly. People not getting treated early for obvious symptoms because they don't have health care certainly costs the economy - i.e. employers and employees, as well as the national work environment. The additional complications and distractions on a sick person's family further adds to the cost. I'm sure someone somewhere tracks lost productivity and economic damage from our dysfunctional health care system, and it'd be nice if one day that were calculated into the costs and benefits analysis.

Now, that doesn't mean any universal health care program is better - the devil is always in the details - but the current health system isn't exactly "free market", it's an amalgam of socialist/subsidized systems and oligopolies. So anyone who's dogmatic about how we can't have universal health care because it's socialist should be working to make the health care system more open, capitalist and free market without barriers and market distortions. Of course good luck with all that.

I'm still not sure how prescription drug benefits for seniors turned into a right for all, while easy access to basic health care treatment for children is a sign of creeping socialism.

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