Rampant Fiscal Irresponsibility!!! (Chart)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Paul Krugman
March 30, 2010, 11:15 am
Health Reform Revelations

One of the side benefits of health reform is that it has acted as a character test. If, for example, you thought of Mitt Romney as a person of character, his desperate attempts to disavow what is essentially his own policy proposal have cured you of that affliction. And as Menzie Chinn points out, Robert Samuelson’s hysterical reaction to what is, when all is said and done, a fairly modest — and paid for! — expansion of social insurance tells what what really lies behind his constant harping on the long-run fiscal issue.

Menzie has a nice chart comparing four policies and their impact on the budget: the two big Bush tax cuts, the Iraq war, and the health reform:



It’s curious, then, that Samuelson and others are driven wild only by the last of these. But Dan Gross explained it all a while back:

"...it’s about a strain of intellectual Toryism bedeviled by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be getting social insurance."

All that high-minded talk about fiscal responsibility is just a cover for this deeper-seated concern.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/health-reform-revelations/

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Clearly fucked up.

Clearly!

[maxsolomon]

2. how come i never hears about this on Fox?

cuz its all liberal lies thats why!

:sarcasm:

[my2sense]

3. +1

[SpiralHawk]

4. The last thing Republicons should ever be called is 'conservatives'

when their radical fiscal irresponsibility has condemned our economy to the crapper for generations to come.

[grantcart]

5. kick

[Zynx]

6. I had Menzie Chinn for two courses here at the UW.

He always did a great job of laying out fiscal policy comparisons such as the one that Krugman quotes there.

[MissMarple]

7. "The markets more resemble the bar scene in Star Wars"than the economics faculty lounge at Princeton

Dan Gross is funny, and correct on the political motivation of these critics. They didn't complain about George's running up the deficits. And now they tell whoppers to justify "concern" now. And they ignore reality:

"If you watch CNBC, though, the market seems capable of showing only its disapproval. All the yahoos who shrieked about the "Obama bear market" when stocks struggled in the first quarter of 2009 haven't turned around and declared an "Obama bull market" even though the S&P 500 has rallied 37 percent since March."