Krugman: Doubling down on W

[eridani]

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34302-focus-doubling-down-on-w

After all, you might have expected the debacle of George W. Bush’s presidency — a debacle not just for the nation, but for the Republican Party, which saw Democrats both take the White House and achieve some major parts of their agenda — to inspire some reconsideration of W-type policies. What we’ve seen instead is a doubling down, a determination to take whatever didn’t work from 2001 to 2008 and do it again, in a more extreme form.

Start with the example that’s easiest to quantify, tax cuts.

Big tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy were the Bush administration’s signature domestic policy. They were sold at the time as fiscally responsible, a matter of giving back part of the budget surplus America was running when W took office. (Alan Greenspan infamously argued that tax cuts were needed to avoid paying off federal debt too fast.) Since then, however, over-the-top warnings about the evils of debt and deficits have become a routine part of Republican rhetoric; and even conservatives occasionally admit that soaring inequality is a problem.

Moreover, it’s harder than ever to claim that tax cuts are the key to prosperity. At this point the private sector has added more than twice as many jobs under President Obama as it did over the corresponding period under W, a period that doesn’t include the Great Recession.

You might think, then, that Bush-style tax cuts would be out of favor. In fact, however, establishment candidates like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush are proposing much bigger tax cuts than W ever did. And independent analysis of Jeb’s proposal shows that it’s even more tilted toward the wealthy than anything his brother did.

What about other economic policies? The Bush administration’s determination to dismantle any restraints on banks — at one staged event, a top official used a chain saw on stacks of regulations — looks remarkably bad in retrospect. But conservatives have bought into the thoroughly debunked narrative that government somehow caused the Great Recession, and all of the Republican candidates have declared their determination to repeal Dodd-Frank, the fairly modest set of regulations imposed after the financial crisis.

[Scuba]

1. Just curious, Paul, but what "major parts" of the Democratic Party agenda were achieved?

Making most of the tax cuts for America's wealthiest permanent?

Passing a Heritage Foundations health insurance subsidy plan?








It sure as hell wasn't securing voting rights.

[n2doc]

3. Oh Scuba, You know

There are lists. Long lists of accomplishments. They get posted here on a regular basis to show that the President is the greatest liberal ever to walk the Earth. How can you deny the List?

[pampango]

2. "The truth is that there are no moderates in the Republican primary, and being reasonable appears to

be a disqualifying characteristic for anyone seeking the party’s nod."

The point is that while the mainstream contenders may have better manners than Mr. Trump or the widely loathed Mr. Cruz, when you get to substance it becomes clear that all of them are frighteningly radical, and that none of them seem to have learned anything from past disasters.

You might have imagined that the story of the Iraq war, where we were not, in fact, welcomed as liberators, where a vast expenditure of blood and treasure left the Middle East less stable than before, would inspire some caution about military force as the policy of first resort. Yet swagger-and-bomb posturing is more or less universal among the leading candidates.

Why does this matter? Right now conventional wisdom, as captured by the bookies and the betting markets, suggests even or better-than-even odds that Mr. Trump or Mr. Cruz will be the nominee, in which case everyone will be aware of the candidate’s extremism. But there’s still a substantial chance that the outsiders will falter and someone less obviously out there — probably Mr. Rubio — will end up on top.

And if this happens, it will be important to realize that not being Donald Trump doesn’t make someone a moderate, or even halfway reasonable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/opinion/doubling-down-on-w.html

[gratuitous]

4. Don't forget that right after the Big Tax Cut

Right after the Big Tax Cut, passed through the Senate when the Vice President personally cast the 51st tie-breaking vote*, the United States launched two elective invasions of foreign countries and put them on the cuff. Several trillion dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives, and 12 years later, we still haven't begun to pay off that particular credit card charge.

Here we are as 2015 dissolves into 2016, and the biggest Republican talking point is how the United States needs to launch another invasion of a Middle East country with nary a peep about how to pay for it. But propose an extra $50 a month for SNAP or Social Security benefits and all the deficit hawks come screeching out of their aeries to demand that unconscionable cost be paid for by taking benefits away from some other poor person.

*Netting himself a tidy $175,000 in additional personal income, out of which I don't think the former vice president has created even one job.

[Sunlei]

5. Bush destroyed America, gave all our Federal money to "for profits" buddies & we still can't recover

Bush made us a target of global hate, that entire family should be in jail.