Remembering When Paul Ryan Worried the Debt Was Too Small

A real portait in principles, Mr. Ryan is.

From Jonathon Chait, at The National Review:



http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/86893/remembering-when-paul-ryan-worried-the-debt-was-too-small

Spend like drunken sailors when you are in power, scream about the deficit when you are out of power. The whole point is to shrink the government. Thank you Thom Hartmann...I can't remember who the quote is attributed to, but Thom frequently mentions it.

to make sure that it doesn't.

Big difference. Great stuff nonetheless.

Thanks for the correction.

It's also not the "hysteria" in the Novak column he cited. (It's here, if anybody has the stomach for it: http://townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/2001/02/22/too_small_a_tax_cut/page/full/ )

The subtext for Novak's column is three-fold:
1) On-coming recession. The leading indicators had said "recession" since the previous summer. A stimulus was in the works. It was way too small, but (D) said it was either (a) way too large or (b) misguided. Tax cuts and lump-sump payments.
2) *'s conservative credentials: (R) cut taxes. He wanted * to be a raving (R), meaning he couldn't engage in any measly, small tax cut.
3) Fear that all the surplus would go into government programs.

The problem with Chait's thesis is that it's a claim, and the evidence he adduces for his claim actually supports different claims. Now, I don't think his claim is right, but he deserves the benefit of the doubt. However, bringing in an irrelevant article and spinning quotes from it to buttress his point certainly doesn't convince me. If anything, it makes me wonder why he didn't actually cite something that supports his claim, since he obviously has Lexis-Nexus access and a far richer dataset to draw from than I do.

Here's my real problem with Chait's argument: He misses the point entirely. We were against deficits when they were $300 billion, $400 billion, $500 billion. They were huge, outrageous, unsustainable, irresponsible. The anti-recession stimulus in early 2008 was too big, we needed to worry more about the deficit even if a recession was starting. Fastforward 10 months. Change the letter after the president's name and suddenly a $1 trillion deficit is acceptable--after all, * ran deficits. A 2009 stimulus 4x the size of the one we had in early 2008 was far too small--we were in a recession, after all! If $400 billion was outrageously huge, $1.4 trillion can't be a minor inconvenience. If $230 billion is too large, $900 billion can't be too small.

I find it a lot easier to be against a $400 billion deficit and against a $1.4 trillion deficit than to be against the small one and indifferent to the latter. I can understand being indifferent to the small one and against the latter; at some point, size certainly matters. I can't understand being against a small deficit when we're in recession but being indifferent to one over 3x bigger during the same recession. It strikes me as bizarrely homeopathic: if $300 billion gets you a recession, $1.3 trillion gets you health and $600 billion deficits for as far as the eye can see maintains it.