Krugman: Calling wingers on their opportunistic Bush "bashing"

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/03/20/opinion/20krugman.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

March 20, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Bogus Bush Bashing
By PAUL KRUGMAN


They can't even criticize Mr. Bush for the systematic dishonesty of his budgets. For one thing, that dishonesty has been apparent for five years. More than that, some prominent conservative commentators actually celebrated the administration's dishonesty. In 2001 Time.com blogger Andrew Sullivan, writing in The New Republic, conceded that Mr. Bush wasn't truthful about his economic policies. But Mr. Sullivan approved of the deception: "Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smokescreen of 'compassionate conservatism.' " As Berkeley's Brad DeLong puts it on his blog, conservatives knew that Mr. Bush was lying about the budget, but they thought they were in on the con.

So what's left? Well, it's safe for conservatives to criticize Mr. Bush for presiding over runaway growth in domestic spending, because that implies that he betrayed his conservative supporters. There's only one problem with this criticism: it's not true.

...


So where does the notion of Bush the big spender come from? In a direct sense it comes largely from Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation, who issued a report last fall alleging that government spending was out of control. Mr. Riedl is very good at his job; his report shifts artfully back and forth among various measures of spending (nominal, real, total, domestic, discretionary, domestic discretionary), managing to convey the false impression that soaring spending on domestic social programs is a major cause of the federal budget deficit without literally lying.

But the reason conservatives fall for the Heritage spin is that it suits their purposes. They need to repudiate George W. Bush, but they can't admit that when Mr. Bush made his key mistakes — starting an unnecessary war, and using dishonest numbers to justify tax cuts — they were cheering him on.

"Bush has to obfuscate his real goals of reducing spending with the smokescreen of 'compassionate conservatism.'"

Well that almost makes it sound as if the only reason Bush has spent so much is because he's propping up social programs. Except for the blatant fact that he's not.

He's cut Medicare and Medicaid and even though they created a "prescription drug plan" it was set up as a giveaway to drug companies and refused the ability to take cost cutting price negotiation steps.

They've made cuts on LIHEAP and recently tried to tie the funding of it to the gutting of ANWR with oil drilling.

They've cut Head Start and Even Start Programs.

They reduced funding to school lunch and breakfast programs.

The only compassion Bush has shown is to the extremely wealthy as he has made every effort to find them some tax cut or loophole they can use to make the poor and middle class balance the costs of our country and of his wars of choice on their backs.

Oh and who makes out like bandits on those wars? The rich. The corporations like Halliburton or GE who got huge contracts in those countries.

When the Poverty rate has increased in the five years in a way not seen since the Great Depression, it's a bullshit call to say any spending Bush does is "compassionate".

Rp

:-(