Yesterday in the RGJ, there was a piece by local columnist David Jacobs snarkily noting that neither George Bush nor Congressional Republicans (back when they held majorities) were all that fiscally conservative. He further suggested that lack of economic smarts helped cause the economic problems we have now.
He’s right.
So why, then, would he endorse the doubling down on those bad policies?
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Actually, it’s a little hard to tell what he’s endorsing, since his piece is incoherent, headless, and fairly pointless. If I were a tenth grade English teacher, I’d probably give it a B minus at best. (I’m sure you could find some B minus posts on this blog, too, but since I don’t get paid for my opinion writing and Mr. Jacobs does, I stand by my scorn.)
But I assume he leans left, since he trots out the tired old memes of “tax cuts for the rich” and all that (demonstrably false) nonsense. That, and because he’s a journalist. It’s not like that’s a 50-50 guess.
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George Bush, led by a Republican Congress, spent way too much money and expanded the size of the federal government. But they also cut taxes substantially on everyone – after the tax cuts, the “rich” actually shouldered a higher tax burden than they did before. This led to an increase in revenue, which helped sustain the increased spending.
But it could only help sustain it.
When the Dems came to power in 2006 in Congress, both total spending and the national debt increased at a substantially greater rate than they had over the previous 6 years. Since George Bush had no power to pass budgets on his own, but could only ratify (or reject) what Congress provides him, the last two years of economic madness is at least shared by them, and I would argue has far more to do with Congress than the president.
But pointing out the Democrats’ blame doesn’t eliminate the responsibility of the GOP. Understanding what caused the problems, though, is useful.
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Identifying things as “Democrat Policies” or “Republican Policies” is not always useful. Not everything George Bush did is conservative, and not everything Bill Clinton did was liberal, and to equate the two as absolutes is dumb.
Part of the purpose of this blog is to figure out just what conservative policies actually are, and why, and how they work, so that in the future I can vote for candidates who espouse them, rather than relying on the “R” or “D” behind there name.
And one thing is certain – the government expansion and spending increases of Republicans under Bush (and Nixon, who Mr. Jacobs also mentions) were Republican policies insofar as they occurred under Republican Presidents, but they were also liberal policies, which is really the most useful of the two labels.
And those policies failed.
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Mr. Jacobs seems to suggest (as have others) that because Republicans have failed to be conservative in the past on fiscal policy, that they are somehow barred from espousing fiscally conservative policies now.
That’s simply nonsense. In fact, it seems to me the people we should be listening to the most are the people who tried something one way, failed, and are now suggesting a different approach using the lessons learned from the last attempt.
Instead, we’re listening to a guy who has never done anything before which could be said to in any way resemble crafting a fiscal policy. He’s never been responsible for a budget before for so much as a local school board. We’re listening to a guy who went to law school, but still doesn’t read what he signs.
I almost wish past failures would forestall criticism, though. The Carter years would have had liberals gagged for decades.
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The real irony is that for being the candidate of “change,” Obama isn’t changing direction so much as he is changing the scope of past policies. He’s spending more and borrowing more than his predecessor.
In other words, he’s doing the same thing Jacobs criticizes Bush and the Republicans for doing, except that he’s doing a lot more of it.
The only thing he’s really doing differently is to raise taxes on producers, which disincentivizes production, which lowers GDP and depresses revenue. How will that help anything?
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I just hope that when these new liberal policies also fail, and Republicans are pointing out the failures of the Democrats, Mr. Jacobs pens another column discounting the very idea that Dems should have the temerity to contribute to the discussion.
I wonder how long I should hold my breath…
