Deficit Demagogues (NY Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/21/opinion/21tue1.html?_r=1&oref=login

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Less than a week after he denounced the "wayward path" of deficit spending to a gathering of 2,000 Republican Party stalwarts, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and would-be president, was busy presiding over business as usual in the Senate. Last Thursday, Mr. Frist, 49 of his fellow Republican senators and one Democrat approved a $2.8 trillion budget for 2007. The budget vote came just hours after Mr. Frist and 51 other Republicans voted to raise the nation's debt limit for the fourth time in five years — this time by $781 billion, to nearly $9 trillion. All of that increase will be needed to pay for earlier tax cuts and spending increases, and, if the Republicans get their way on taxes, to pay for future deficit-financed tax cuts.

Wayward, indeed. Mr. Frist has voted for every major spending increase and tax cut backed by President Bush since 2001. As the Senate leader for more than three years, he bears even greater responsibility than his fellow enablers for the country's dismal financial condition. Yet he is certainly not alone these days in calling for greater budget restraint while pursuing reckless policies. Other Republican presidential hopefuls, notably Senator George Allen and Senator John McCain, have also been coming out forcefully as fiscal conservatives.

Mr. Allen's record is no better than Mr. Frist's. Mr. McCain made a stand by voting against the Medicare prescription drug benefit in 2003 and Mr. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. But, like his fellow Republican contenders, he supports extending tax cuts for investors, even though they are not paid for.

If leading Republicans were serious about the deficit, here's what they'd be saying:

....more

... is the Democrats.

It's a pattern. The Republicans (you know, the party of fiscal responsibility we've heard so much about) invariably spend, spend, and spend some more, and put the country into debt.

Then they step back and wait for a Democrat to take back the WH. Once in office, the Dem has no choice but to take drastic measures to stop the financial hemorrhaging.

Four years later, that Dem is up for re-election and the Repubs say, "Don't vote for HIM - he's the guy who RAISED taxes."

It has become a tired cliche - the Republicans couldn't exist, nor could the country, if it wasn't for a Democrat getting into power every few years to clean up the mess made by the Republican administration that preceded him.

And so the story goes, on and on ...

Former senator/present governor Jon Corzine is compelled to break a campaign promise to increase the homeowners' rebates, but can't. He has to pay for a $4 billion deficit that he inherited, mostly from past administrations borrowing through bonds to finance programs that they couldn't afford. New Jersey residents face a one-cent sales tax increase across the board, tax on water, no state aid to municipal school systems (read, increase in property taxes 10-15%), among other painful fiscal remedies. And no, this will not make the new governor very popular as he acts in behalf of all residents in order to pay the debt. Instead, this program will be used against him and against ALL democratic candidates as tax-and-spend libruls. I'm so tired of the pattern too.

That's the way it goes...