re: #140 RogueOne

Increasing business costs and taxes when the economy is rolling along at a pathetic 1% growth rate is not an answer unless the question is “how can we drag the recession out as long as possible”. HCR was never about lowering costs or lowering the jobless rate and to do it now when we’re in the midst of the worst economy in 40 years wasn’t “proper planning”.

IMO, There are 3 distinctly different questions we need to answer. 1. How can we lower unemployment, 2. How can we lower the deficit, and 3. Can we do both at the same time?. Krugmans argument is we shouldn’t worry about the deficit which everyone, including the president, realizes isn’t a good answer.

There’s politics and there’s economics. Increasing the deficit through stimulative spending is good economics right now. It’s become bad politics because of the dishonest arguments of those who want tax cuts for their own reasons.

We used to have a broad consensus in America that the government had a role to play in managing the economic cycle, so the dips were shorter and shallower. It seems like, for this election cycle, the GOP has decided to throw sound economic policy to the wind because of short term electoral concerns. That is a rather sad trade.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. If they’ll do it on AGW, everything else is chump change, isn’t it?