Voodoo Economics Redux

You gotta love Republican economics.  It flip flops like a fish on a dock.  Is it supply side or is it deficit hawk?  Is it for profligate spending and no taxation?  Will it claim somehow to balance the budget by decreasing taxes?  What kind of crazy voodoo economics is it this time?

An early example of fish thrashing on wood.  When he was trying to be the Republican presidential nominee in 1980, George H.W. Bush (George Pere) derided Reagan’s supply-side policies as “voodoo economics”. Later he promoted those policies to become the Republican nominee 1988.  Famously pronouncing, “Read my lips, no new taxes”, he ended up eating his words. He imposed tax increases.  He was for tax increases before he was against them and then he was for them again.  Mostly, he was for rich folks’ benefit and winning the election.  That seems a fairly easy idea to fulfill.  Not.

And now you have John McSame who is dancing to the same Republican economics pipers. Today’s New York Times reports that McSame’s economics policy is not very pleasing at all to the rich folks:

As Senator John McCain began a week of economic-themed campaigning here on Monday, it was apparent that some of the underlying tension between the two schools that guide his economic thinking – supply-siders who want to cut taxes and deficit hawks who want to balance the federal budget – remained unresolved.

Mr. McCain is pledging once again to balance the budget by the end of his first term as president in 2013, his advisers said Monday, reverting to an earlier pledge that the Arizona senator had abandoned in April when he proposed a series of costly tax cuts for corporations and high earners, and said it might take two terms to balance the budget.

“American workers and families pay their bills and balance their budgets, and I will demand the same of the government,” Mr. McCain said at a town hall-style meeting here.

But it is unclear how Mr. McCain plans to balance the budget, given that fiscal analysts who have examined his economic plans say his calls to extend the Bush tax cuts while cutting corporate and other taxes would likely increase the deficit significantly.

This tension between steep tax cuts and deficit reduction has been a recurring theme in the evolution of Mr. McCain.

You gotta love this.  This is music to my ears.  I hear that huge, flapping fish in the bottom of the rowboat. Get this.  McSame is going to balance the budget, which is seriously in deficit even if you don’t count the humongous cost of the war, by 2013 but he’s going to do it by cutting taxes for corporations and rich people and extending the Bush tax cuts.  In the short and the long term, that is sure to reduce revenues to the government and to increase the deficit.  Isn’t, after all, the deficit the amount that spending surpasses revenue?  Only Liberals allegedly tax and spend.  The Republicans just spend and spend and spend.

Of course, the Times, mouthpiece of the ruling oligarchy, gives him the courtly, seeming benefit of the doubt by saying that “it is unclear how [he] plans to balance the budget.”  That would be Times-speak for, “Are you f*cking kidding me?  This will not balance anything and will make the deficit worse.”  I’m always happy to translate the Times, but I digress.

The Times twice repeats that there’s a “tension” between steep tax cuts and deficit reduction.  That would be Times-speak for “The two are irreconcilable.  They are contradictory.  You only get to choose one or the other.  Tension my foot.  You pays your money, you gets your choice.  Which one is it, McSame?”

I should add that the answers to these economics questions are extremely important to the Times because they are important to rich people, to corporations, to stock holders, to the Times’ readership of choice.  If the economy is in the gutter, that is in general not good for the Times’s constituency unless it somehow makes them wealthier.

So unhappy is the Times with McSame’s flopping around that it brings up the history of McSame being against it before he was for it before he was against it before:

As a senator, Mr. McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts that he now wants to make permanent, warning that they were tilted toward the rich and were not offset by enough spending cuts to pay for them. /snip

Robert Bixby, the president of the Concord Coalition, which advocates balanced budgets, questioned how his proposals could lead to balanced budgets.

“It’s feasible to balance the budget by 2013, but very unlikely under the policies Senator McCain has proposed,” he said in an e-mail. “The spending cuts are far too vague to be counted on for significant savings and, even if they were more specific, I can’t see how they would come close to offsetting the level of tax cuts he recommends. Looking at this set of proposals it doesn’t seem that McCain fits neatly into either the deficit hawk or supply side camp.”

Mr. McCain, who has been dogged by his own past statements that he does not understand the economy as well as he should, has not always spoken fluently about the economy during the campaign.

When he was asked at a town hall style-meeting in Connecticut in April whether he wanted to “raise taxes, cut entitlement spending, cut defense spending or have a deficit,” he said that he would emulate President Ronald Reagan.

He did not mention that Mr. Reagan greatly increased the deficit.

Ouch.  A slap to be sure.  To translate the Times further, McSame voted against the very program he is now advocating.  And now he’s saying he can balance the budget increasing spending and cutting revenues.  Arrgh.  Cannot be done.  That has the budget hawks and the Times upset and saying he’s blowing smoke.

And then we have this small gem:

And when he outlined his tax cut proposals shortly before the South Carolina primary in January, Mr. McCain overdid it in his new enthusiasm for supply-side economics. “‘Don’t listen to this siren song about cutting taxes,” he said then. “Every time in history we have raised taxes, it has cut revenues.”

There have been, of course, a number of tax increases that raised the government’s revenues.

Ouch.  The New York Times, the grey lady, is so snippy when confronting this kind of economic tomfoolery.  You’d think she was kicked in the pocket book. And it even dispenses this slap to McSame in a news article.  Ouch.  Prithee, why so snippy?  Because the president is supposed to understand economics so he can preserve and increase the wealth of the rich, his most important constituency.  And when he demonstrates to rich folks that he has no idea WTF he’s talking about, he gets in trouble with rich folks, who by the way, want their president to increase their wealth and to re-distribute it away from poorer people if that can be done.  For these powerful people, it’s about the Benjamins.  And McSame is not sending them a soothing message.  He’s not demonstrating that he knows what they want him to do.

And what does his constituency want him to do?  He’s not sure.  He cannot balance the budget and simultaneously cut taxes.  He cannot listen to budget hawks and supply siders and somehow unite them because they disagree on policy.  There’s going to be a battle in the Republican camp about this.  There has to be.

I can only hope that outsiders to this debate, people like you and me, fight the fire with kerosene.  In a nation with an economy in such desperate shape as the US has now, the economy is an extremely important issue that the candidates have to address.  McSame has no real answers to this.  Those who wish to defeat him have to make that clear to everyone who will listen.