Republican Fiscal Irresponsibility

Written by: Alan Willis on Apr 10, 2008 12:20 AM EDT

Republicans, as has been noted on posts here, have long accused Democrats fiscal irresponsibility—the famous “tax and spend” Democrats. While other postings here have noted, accurately, that the annual budget deficits exploded under the Republican presidents and shrank (in fact, under Clinton they disappeared) under Democrats, a deeper analysis suggests something rather a bit more sinister is afoot.

True enough, Reagan ran on a platform calling for a “balanced budget” and produced the most unbalanced peace-time budgets in the nation’s history; his budget imbalances have been dwarfed by those of George W. Bush, but I’m sure that the current administration but these are not peace-time budgets, a point we will return to in a moment. Why would Reagan create such huge budget deficits after promising a balanced budgets. David Stockton, a key economic advisor in the early years of the Reagan administration noted that the Republicans engaged in a policy called “starving the beast” in which they hoped to run enormous deficits—primarily through military spending—in order to create a fiscal crisis in which the mass of Americans would call for drastic cut-backs in social spending.

The key to the Bush II administration's implementation of this policy was their ability to transform September 11 into a perpetual War on Terror. In a war, the military budget will remain—the logic goes—sacrosanct. Therefore, a perpetual war allows for drastic cutbacks in social spending and dramatic restructuring of the Federal budget while keeping the military budgets off-limits. This has worked out tremendously well for many of George W. Bush’s pet projects and the corporations of many of his advisors. The Cheney-Halliburton connection is well known. Donald Rumsfeld was long cozy with defense contractors before returning to “government service” (which, in this administration, has too often meant “self service”) in the Department of Defense.

To make matters worse (almost unimaginable, and yet somehow possible) the Republicans have sold a fair portion of the American population on the idea that private industry is better able to do several jobs the government used to do. Actually, by itself, this may not be untrue. But when applied to veterans hospitals it has been appallingly wrongheaded. Care has been subsumed under profit. But hospitals are only one aspect. The war itself is subcontracted to Private Military Corporations. On the “home front” research for counteracting biological warfare or terrorism done at the Center for Disease Control has been privatized as well; now for the same research the government not only pays the same scientists, but also the private company which handles their contracts, and makes a profit.

Unreasonable and blind allegiance to privatization and maintaining the “starving the beast” philosophy negate any Republican claim to fiscal responsibility. And, yet, the accusations will—of course—be leveled against Democrats, and in particular progressive Democrats who might just support social programs. We need to be ready with all the facts.

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