Monday, February 11, 2013

Marching To Oblivion



Republicans must be furious with David Frum. The man who wrote George W. Bush's "axis of evil" speech is increasingly at odds with his party. On Saturday he wrote that the economy of the United States is far from full recovery:

A new survey by Rutgers University finds that 23% of Americans have lost a job (whether full-time or part-time) at some point in the past four years. Another 11% report a job loss by a member of their immediate family.

There are 12.3 million unemployed Americans today, and that number would be even higher if we counted those who have quit searching for work.

However, congressional Republicans -- cheered on by Charles Krauthammer -- have vowed to stand firm on budget cuts -- even if it triggers the budget sequester. Frum writes:

The sequester ax is sharp. It will cut government spending in the next fiscal year by 0.5% of GDP and continue to chop deeper and deeper over the decade ahead, until an alternative budget deal is reached. A half a point does not sound like much, until you remember that the U.S. economy is growing at a rate of barely 2%.

Economists in the room will note that the U.S. budget deficit already is shrinking at the fastest rate since the end of Second World War: According to the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. budget deficit is on track to decline by 3.7 percentage points between fiscal 2010 and the end of fiscal 2013 — without any changes in current policy at all. That would be a steeper deficit reduction than occurred during the booming 1990s.

Economists may also worry: Won’t accelerating the already rapid deficit-cutting with extra taxes and additional abrupt spending cuts risk pushing the U.S. back into recession — in the same way that premature budget-cutting in 1937 aborted the economic recovery of 1934-1936 and plunged the U.S. back into depression?

Europe has been down this road. It leads over the cliff. The Republicans have become the lemming party -- happily marching into oblivion.
 
This entry is cross posted at The Moderate Voice.

2 comments:

The Mound of Sound said...

It's all part of the civil war underway within the Republican Party. Time is not on the extremists' side. It never was. Frum's moderates will prevail but they're fighting to ensure they'll recover more than embers and ashes.

There's a powerfully nihilistic quality to rightwing extremism and not just south of the border.

You can only run on faith-based reasoning so long before it's bound to blow up in your face. Such is the fate of all who defy science, fact and logic.

I have read an immense amount about WWII Germany and have recently come to see their Furhrer as an archtypical faith-based ruler. He acted on powerful, unsubstantiated beliefs forged by excluding facts, logic and reason. When he entered his bunker in Berlin as Soviet armies closed in on the city, he still believed defeat could be avoided.

What is faith but a suspension of disbelief ordinarily seen in some religious context? It does not, however, need religious trappings to exist.

Owen Gray said...

Sounds a little like Mitt Romney's and Karl Rove's certitude on election night, Mound.

Republican nostrums die hard. Perhaps the party will die with them.