Paul Krugman: "Deficit-Scolds Never Really About Deficit, But About Shredding Social Safety Net"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/12/opinion/krugman-hawks-and-hypocrites.htmlOP-ED COLUMNIST
Hawks and Hypocrites
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: November 11, 2012
Back in 2010, self-styled deficit hawks — better described as deficit scolds — took over much of our political discourse. At a time of mass unemployment and record-low borrowing costs, a time when economic theory said we needed more, not less, deficit spending, the scolds convinced most of our political class that deficits rather than jobs should be our top economic priority. And now that the election is over, they’re trying to pick up where they left off.
They should be told to go away.
It’s not just the fact that the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far. Recent events have also demonstrated clearly what was already apparent to careful observers: the deficit-scold movement was never really about the deficit. Instead, it was about using deficit fears to shred the social safety net. And letting that happen wouldn’t just be bad policy; it would be a betrayal of the Americans who just re-elected a health-reformer president and voted in some of the most progressive senators ever.
About the hypocrisy of the hawks: as I said, it has been evident for years. Consider the early-2011 award for “fiscal responsibility” that three of the leading deficit-scold organizations gave to none other than Paul Ryan. Then as now, Mr. Ryan’s alleged plans to reduce the deficit were obvious flimflam, since he was proposing huge tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations while refusing to specify how these cuts would be offset. But in the eyes of the deficit scolds, his plan to dismantle Medicare and his savage cuts to Medicaid apparently qualified him as a fiscal icon.
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And then there’s the matter of the “fiscal cliff.”
Contrary to the way it’s often portrayed, the looming prospect of spending cuts and tax increases isn’t a fiscal crisis. It is, instead, a political crisis brought on by the G.O.P.’s attempt to take the economy hostage. And just to be clear, the danger for next year is not that the deficit will be too large but that it will be too small, and hence plunge America back into recession.
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They said it would force the end of Social Security, etc. They said that was the reason for all the outrageous spending. Couldn't let those peasants get a peace dividend. Oh, no, that would be immoral. The Reagan administration believed in the philosophy of Ayn Rand, but covered it up with cloyingly sentimental religion imagery.
The GOP has always said Social Security was going broke, from the inception. They liked the Great Depression and the wars, they made millions from both. They re-arranged the political and physical landscape of the United States with them. The first one backfired in the face of many years of leftist and progressive movements, resulting in the FDR move to create a social democracy. It was working, too. How terrible! 
I wish I'd kept an old magazine I found in my barn, published in the fifites. They said that Social Security would be broke in ten years. That was even before Medicare began. Social Secuirty and social safety programs are not a matter of the budget. They are a matter of political will. That will has been weakened by generations of propaganda. For each one, those who hate it tell the younger generation it won't be there.
This may be the generation that finally buys that lie and makes it happen by giving up if they reject progressive government.
Well said!
