Tea-Publican priorities are low priorities for the American middle class

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

"You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don't matter." — Vice President Dick Cheney as first recounted by Paul O'Neill, Bush's Treasury Secretary.

In our time, the Republican Party has compiled an impressive history of talking about fiscal responsibility while running up unrivaled deficits and debt. Dick Cheney was right – Joe Conason – Salon.com:

Of the roughly $11 trillion in federal debt accumulated to date [March 2009], more than 90 percent can be attributed to the tenure of three presidents: Ronald Reagan, who used to complain constantly about runaway spending; George Herbert Walker Bush, reputed to be one of those old-fashioned green-eyeshade Republicans; and his spendthrift son George "Dubya" Bush, whose trillion-dollar war and irresponsible tax cuts accounted for nearly half the entire burden. Only Bill Clinton temporarily reversed the trend with surpluses and started to pay down the debt (by raising rates on the wealthiest taxpayers).

Dick Cheney was right and the Tea-Publicans are wrong. "A CBS News poll released this week asked Americans what they'd like to see Congress focus on next year. The clear winner was "economy/jobs," cited by 56% of respondents. Health care was a distant second at 14%. The deficit, the wars, immigration, taxes, and education were all mentioned, but their results were in the low single digits." The Washington Monthly.

What matters most to the American middle class is addressing the "jobs deficit," more than a decade in the making, but the Tea-Publicans have no serious proposals for job creation. Instead they simply repeat the conservative ideological touchstones: cut taxes for the rich and corporations, reduce government spending and reduce government regulations. This is actually counter-productive to job creation. How do we know? The profligate George "W" years produced this: The Bush Years Were a Lost Decade.

 

Steve Benen continues:

Economic growth and job creation should be the focus, but Republicans, with their new House majority, have already made clear that their top priorities are fairly low priorities for the American mainstream — gutting the health care system, protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, and reducing the deficit. (Yes, those are contradictory goals, since gutting health care and cutting taxes would make the deficit much worse. [emphasis added])

The larger point to remember, though, is a truth the political world often forgets: deficit reduction is a political loser because people really don't care.

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And since focusing on deficit reduction generally happens at the expense of growth, the goal would be counter-productive anyway.

The track record here is pretty consistent — Reagan was the father of the modern deficit, and no one cared. When Mondale tried to make deficit reduction central to his '84 campaign, he lost 49 states. Clinton was the father of modern deficit reduction, but no one much cared about that, either, and by the time he left office after two terms, much of the country didn't even realize he'd completely eliminated the deficit and had begun paying off the debt. George W. Bush was the most fiscally irresponsible president in American history, but on the long list of Bush's failures, most Americans don't even consider the $5 trillion he added to the debt. Obama has actually reduced the deficit over the last year, but no one actually hears deficit hawks praising him for it.

Voters want the economy to grow. They want more jobs. If they actually cared about the deficit, they'd be outraged by the notion of a new round of tax cuts (they're not), and supportive of measures like the Simpson/Bowles plan (they're really not).

It's not altogether clear people even know what the deficit is. For many, it's likely that the deficit is just something that's "bad." Indeed, given that deficit concerns tend to coincide with economic downturns, some folks might see a correlation — the deficit is high and the economy is bad, they figure, so maybe if the deficit were lower the economy might get better.

All of this is nonsense, of course, but it's worth remembering when various political players suggest policymakers' popularity is riding on deficit reduction. It's not.

UPDATE: H/t Ezra Klein: