James Galbraith: The Practiced Lunacy of Budget Debates (NYT)

[chill_wind]

The Practiced Lunacy of Budget Debates

February 15, 2011, 10:19 AM

On no theory will the cuts strengthen the economy, and they won't much reduce the deficit either.

James K. Galbraith, an economist at the L.B.J. School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, is head of the University of Texas Inequality Project and author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too."

Give the Republicans credit for clarity: they oppose spending for people who don't vote Republican. So while Speaker Boehner protected a $450 million made-in-Ohio fighter engine that the Pentagon doesn't want, his cuts would fall on food, education, heating oil, health, police, roads and sewer systems throughout urban, low-income and Democratic America.



The Republicans have yielded to their inner Edna St. Vincent Millay. They fear the political moment won't last – as it didn't in 1981 and 1995. So they are going for broke while they can.

The White House also has just one goal: re-election. So it chose a few big cruel cuts – such as low income heating assistance -- as a political sacrifice (call it Obama's Ricky Ray Rector moment). And then it proposes a great many smaller cuts, and some worthy increases. In this way the president looks both “serious” and “reasonable” – just the formula for winning the propaganda war.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/02/14/what-the-budget-cuts-say-about-obama/the-practiced-lunacy-of-budget-debates