Krugman: No Ideas

[Derechos]

Ezra Klein points us to the House GOP’s rather pitiful jobs manifesto. Ezra describes it as “now more than ever”: the GOP’s response to the employment crisis is to demand exactly the same things it demands when the economy is doing well.

Actually, the same is true of the Ryan plan: when the GOP claimed that deficits don’t matter, it called for privatizing major social insurance programs while cutting taxes on the rich, and now that it claims to be deeply concerned about deficits, it calls for privatizing major social insurance programs while cutting taxes on the rich.

This is a major asymmetry: people on the other side really do offer different prescriptions for different problems. I’m often accused of inconsistency for warning about deficits back in 2003 while favoring continuing deficits now — but the point is that these were responses to different issues. The Bush tax cuts were intended to be permanent — so they were designed to increase deficits even when the economy was at more or less full employment. This was a bad thing. By contrast, deficits are helpful when the economy is depressed and in a liquidity trap, as it is now.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/

[rpannier]

1. If they knew for 100% certainty the rapture was coming

They'd claim tax cuts and social cuts were necessary to help usher in Jesus.

[n2doc]

2. They'll do that anyway

They don't need a real excuse.

[rpannier]

3. Exactly

Tomorrow is some guys birthday -- tax cuts social services cut
Tornado strikes -- tax cuts, social services cuts
Your Aunt Madge passed away? Sorry about that -- tax cuts, etc

[pansypoo53219]

4. it's a fetish.

and they BELIEVE in their way, even tho FACTS prove they are wrong. on NPR they were interviewing a GOoPer and the reported told him some facts showing he was economically wrong, but the retardican was insistent on his BELIEFS. FACTS DON'T MATTER.

[JayhawkSD]

5. No question Republican plans are pathetic

But Democratic have no plans at all. They just criticize Republican plans as "disasterous" and offer nothing as an alternative.

This is the same thing Republicans did when they were in the minority. Slam the majority's plans and offer no alternative.

Both patries act in the same manner. When in the majority try to enact as partisan a policy as possible. When in the minority, simply block everything and shut down governance, and threaten to shut down government itself. In this respect the parties are identical. They may have differing ideaologies, but their methods are identical, and are intensely destructive to government and to the nation.