Former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett: Why Republicans are such massive hypocrites on stimulus
Former Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett: Why Republicans are such massive hypocrites on stimulus
Right-wing economists don't mind the huge bailout, says Bartlett: "They love Trump. He is destroying government"
PAUL ROSENBERG at Salon
MARCH 26, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/26/former-reagan-aide-bruce-bartlett-why-republicans-are-such-massive-hypocrites-on-stimulus/
"SNIP.....
In 2009, when Barack Obama proposed a relatively modest economic stimulus — one that Paul Krugman, among others, warned was roughly half the size that was needed — Republican politicians and economists screamed bloody murder. Now, with COVID-19 panic gripping the world, and a Republican in the White House, it's a totally different story. Surprise, surprise. As David Dayen noted Wednesday, the stimulus package the U.S. Senate may have passed by the time you read this is "not a $2 trillion bill, [but] closer to $6 trillion, since bailout money helps capitalize $4.25 trillion in leveraged lending by the Federal Reserve.
Just because this ideological switchback is so predictable doesn't mean we should shrug it off. Becoming habituated to GOP hypocrisy is a crucial part of how and why they continue to get away with it. Normalizing bad-faith politics, to put it another way, is a central goal of bad-faith politics.
......
Second is something I call the Lofgren Corollary. It goes like this: Republicans assert, on the basis of lies or nothing at all, that some government program or agency is loaded with fat or not working properly. Thus they cut the budget, maybe only a little at first. If nothing happens, they will claim success and enact more cuts. Eventually the cuts diminish effectiveness and Republicans will claim it is inherent in the nature of the program and demand more cuts to punish the lazy worthless staff. The effectiveness declines further. Republicans demand more cuts and so on, until the program or agency can be abolished.
In other words, it is intentional Republican strategy to make government work poorly to justify budget cuts. The problem is that once in a while — like now — we suffer badly because essential programs and agencies are unable to do their jobs because they are unprepared due to past budget cuts. Eventually, Republicans will claim that CDC, NIH, etc., fucked up, not Trump.
.....SNIP"
= new reply since forum marked as read
