Republicans writing checks their administration can’t cash

December 16, 2007

Quick quiz: what’s going to cost the U.S. more over the next decade: the exploding costs of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare or Bush’s tax cuts? Despite all the talk we hear about the prior, it’s not even close — the tax cuts are poised to cost the treasury far, far, more.

And yet, every Republican presidential candidate in the field, to a man, vows to make each of Bush’s cut permanent, beyond their scheduled expiration in 2010. As the NYT’s Tom Redburn notes today, over the next 10 years, it will cost “roughly $2.5 trillion in revenues now expected under current law. And that’s just the beginning.”

Even without taking on any additional tasks, merely meeting the government’s existing obligations — mostly to pay for the military and to keep up with the health care and retirement needs of the elderly — would send the budget deficit soaring, pushing overall federal debt held by the public from under 50 percent of the size of the nation’s economy today to over 300 percent by 2050.

“The combination of roughly constant revenues and significantly rising expenditures would quickly create an unstable fiscal situation,” the [Congressional Budget Office] report notes alarmingly, but in its characteristically dry and understated manner.

How would the Republican candidates deal with this problem? Most say they would try to hold down spending — and cut taxes even more.

Keep in mind, most of the GOP field, including Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, are on record believing in the Tax Fairy — tax cuts can pay for themselves with increased revenue. It’s transparent nonsense, but it helps explain why the Republican field doesn’t even pretend to care about fiscal sanity.

The notion that Republicans would even consider additional tax cuts, on top of the reckless and irresponsible cuts from Bush’s first term, apparently stems from a political necessity.

[R]ather than delivering any additional benefit that voters can actually take to the bank, carrying out such a pledge [of making Bush’s cuts permanent] would do nothing more than maintain the status quo. Nobody’s taxes would be cut further; they would at best stay the same. There’s not as much political payoff in that.

And preventing anybody from being worse off is going to be incredibly costly. Indeed, it requires running faster and faster just to stay in the same place. A new report from the Congressional Budget Office on the long-term budget outlook, delivered to Congress on Thursday, makes clear the depth of the fiscal hole the next president will inherit from President Bush.

The GOP field sees this and thinks, “What America really needs is even more cuts! Without even pretending to come up with a plan to pay for them!”

When Republicans wonder why no one takes them seriously anymore on matters of public policy, this should offer a big hint.

December 16, 2007 at 11:18 am

I seem to remember that most of the Bush tax cuts start to sunset after 10 years…(around 2010)…no need to repeal them, thank God, ‘cuz no one in DC wants to go on record in favor of raising taxes.

Finally, we can start to get our fiscal house in order again…

The susnset provision is dated to 2010 to give the GOP an issue to run on and against in 2009. The only time a President can really get anything done is early in their first term — cf. Reagan — and this guarantees a noisy counter–agenda to universal health, or whatever the new Democratic President is proposing.

The GOP field sees this and thinks, “What America really needs is even more cuts! Without even pretending to come up with a plan to pay for them!”

No, not really. At least not for most of them. What the GOP field sees is a game, the object of which is to win and hold power. The only purpose of government to them is to perpetuate the game, and the only purpose of governing to them is the accumulation of power.

In short, “what America needs” never even occurs to most people in the GOP field, because America’s needs simply don’t inform their views on government. Hence why Republicans almost always try to shape what Americans think they need through fear, intimidation, and obsequious piety, rather than respond to real and perceived needs. It’s an excellent short term strategy for maintaining power, though it obviously suffers in the long term once the ability to credibly escalate the rhetoric starts to wane.

That Congress will continue to be ‘controlled’ by the spineless Dems is a foregone conclusion. That the WH will be as well is far from certain. No matter who the next figurehead president is going to be he/she inherits a mess that can only be sorted out with a unfied, filibuster-proof, or maybe veto-proof Congress. The Dems are just as controlled by special interests as is the GOP – look at they came down on the side of taxing hedge fund income at lower rates than you and I pay for earned income – so I think the courage to do what is necessary is not likely to be there. Perhaps when the dollar falls into the cellar, and oil is traded in euros, and no one will buy our IOUs something will change. But those changes could easily make things worse.

Going back to 1866, EVERY economic screwup in the history of the country has been because of actions by Republicans. We had to correct 60 years of Republican fiscal mismanagement under FDR, and they hate us to this day for doing that. We’re going to pull their bacon out of the fire this time to the same response. Fortunately for me, they’ll be doing their hating from under their rocks for the next 30 years, like they did after 1932, so it’s going to be a Lifetime Of Republican-Free pass for me.

We really don’t need to worry what they say, folks. The overwhelming majority of Americans now “get it” on every issue they think they can run on, and see them for the boobs and dimwits they are.

“Quick quiz: what’s going to cost the U.S. more over the next decade: the exploding costs of entitlements like Social Security and Medicare or Bush’s tax cuts? “

While the point of this post is well taken, it nevertheless manages to contribute to the public’s confusion over entitlement costs.

Once again,slowly: the projected cost of Social Security is not “exploding”. In fact, the program will meet all of its projected payouts into the mid 21st century. At that time, it will require relatively modest revision in order to continue to meet its obligations. See Paul Krugman and Dean Baker for the details.

Conflating Social Security with Medicare (the cost of which will “explode” without a change in policy) only serves to reinforce the rightwing talking points. Steve, you’re better than this.

I hope we never have to see somewhere that Bush has illegally borrowed or stolen all the social security funds to pay for war funding. I put nothing past these yahoos and even though this seems an impossibility…every day I live in fear of this president…of what he might do next.

Social Security is just fine and will stay that way well into the 21st century…signed Pres. Bush.

Thanks Bush…that’s just what I wanted to hear.

Except for the greediest of the ultra wealthy, when it comes to these tax cuts they are going WTF? Out of the $8 billion I made last year I’m really gonna miss that $1 billion I paid in taxes. I mean…really. Perhaps the GOP feels that $1 billion should go for campaign contributions for voting in these tax cuts. Totally unconcerned with the “needs of the nation”.

bjobotts: I’m sorry to be the one to point it out, but of course the Bush administration HAS been borrowing all the Social Security funds to pay for war funding. (Since the Republic party also controlled both houses, though, at let “paygo” rules lapse, it was all more-or-less legal.)

Social Security is currently running a healthy deficit, and will for about another 10 years or so.
Bush cut taxes, then proposed and signed deficit budgets, then put the costs not only of the war in Iraq, but also of the very expensive years of occupation and police action after the war “off budget” by bringing the war and occupation costs to Congress after the budgets had been passed, as “special emergency approrpriations”.

The only way to cover the deficit, not to mention “off budget” expenses, is by borrowing the money from someone, and the very first place the Treasury turns to borrow money is the Social Security surplus. Since that surplus wasn’t enough, the government has also been selling Treasury bonds at a tremendous rate, a great many of which are now in the hands of the governments of nice democratic places like China and Saudi Arabia.

Then, in a typically shameless fashion, Bush and his abettors turned around and began saying “Social Security is in a crisis! And all that talk about a ‘surplus’ or ‘lockbox’, all those government IOU’s that the Social Security administration holds are meaningless! The sky is falling!”

…thus establishing that Bush and the Republic party leadership, and too many Washington Democrats, are mendacious, corrupt and wrongheaded. But…nothing illegal in any of that.

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