Still Can't Get Past the Crazy- Budget Deficit Edition

Another futile discussion with my wingnut correspondent today.  I tried to argue with him about the deficit, but I just can't get past the crazy.  Then I come home to read Jon Chait today make my point in reference to Mitt Romney's last speech.

In Romney’s telling, the terms debt and spending are essentially interchangeable. When presented with Obama’s position — that the solution to the debt ought to include both higher taxes and lower spending — he rejects it out of hand.

Just like my debate today.  My correspondent kept pointing out that liberals only want to spend more of our money.  I noted some facts about the federal budget:

1. 1999: budget was in surplus
2. 2001 & 2003: enormous tax cuts were passed by Republicans
3. Republicans started Iraq War without funding it
4. A Republican congress passed Medicare Part D, prescription drug coverage in (I think) 2006, without funding it. A Republican president signed it
5. By 2008 the budget was in a huge deficit, made worse by the financial crisis

Now it seems sort of obvious to me that if we want to get back to a balanced budget, we ought to think about reversing the things we did that took us out of balance. I want to reverse #2. #3 is winding down, fortunately. #4 I like and want to keep, but I think we should fund it with taxes instead of borrowing from our children.

But hey, Republicans have some budget plans:

1. Cut taxes even more (oops that goes the wrong direction)
2. Increase military spending (oops, that does too)
3. Make Medicare into a voucher program, making it unaffordable over time to more and more seniors. But don't start that right away, only for people under 55 (so that won't help at all for 10 years, and even then it just offloads the medical cost problem to individual seniors)
4. Destroy most programs that benefit the poor, all of which have been around since the '60s and '70s and none of which were started by Obama or even by Clinton.
5. End ObamaCare (oops, wrong direction again since ObamaCare includes taxes that make it budget neutral or even better)

So in this Paul Ryan plan, supported by nearly every Republican in Congress, only #4 actually helps the budget, while all the other parts make the deficit worse. And #4 doesn't include enough dollars to make up the difference, so the whole plan relies on what Paul Krugman calls the "magic asterisk" of either undefined (i.e. never gonna happen) cuts or ridiculous economic growth that only the most feverish supply-siders believe will actually happen.

 

To put the whole thing more simply: Republican talking points talk about the deficit only in terms of spending, even though the major change that has caused the deficit is a tax cut.  They won't even talk about raising revenues, but still scream in panic about the deficit.  Of course, there's a simple reason why:

 

Republicans don't really care about the deficit.  It's a sucker's game, always has been.  Here's a prediction: If Republicans sweep in the Fall, the deficit will go up, not down.