Posture not Policy

I consider myself a deficit hawk.  It's really unconscionable to me that we allow our government to run a permanent budget deficit.  It's a sign of the feverish illness in our politics that we rarely agree on something as basic as only spending the money you have.  Now, my proposed solution to the budget deficit- dramatically increased government revenues- isn't broadly popular.  Nonetheless, I feel that I and my conservative fellow policy travelers at least share a common concern for the importance of balancing the budget.  What I hope everyone can understand is that balancing the budget is a long term goal.  For now it's a truly fantastic proposal akin to curing cancer by fiat.  So when I hear that Rand Paul is threatening to filibuster any budget that isn't balanced I am disgusted.  That's the talking point of a liar or a mad man, not the "intellectually honest" politician Dr. Paul is made out to be.

Chris commented that "at least considers [Dr. Paul] not stealing from future generations important."  I'm not impressed.  The budget deficit and national debt is a huge problem that has accumulated over many years, for many reasons.  It's going to take a long time and a lot of painful tradeoffs to even get within spitting distance of a balanced budget- let alone Clinton era surpluses.  Since Dr. Paul obviously doesn't have tax increases in mind, what he is proposing would be nothing less than immediately firing thousands of federal employee, including a huge part of the military, drastically and immediately cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits and probably shutting down government for awhile.  That's the only way to balance the budget immediately without tax increases.  Now, I bet Dr. Paul probably wouldn't that much of a problem with any of that.  I do have a problem with him pretending that balancing the budget can be done by stubborn theatrical tricks without mentioning that you want to perform budget surgery with a chainsaw. 

Dr. Paul offers a ridiculous way to govern, but a fine way to play to the cheap seats.  The complete unravelling of whatever broad appeal he might have had continues apace.

Comments

[Christopher Carr]

Paul's view on the deficit is definitely extreme, but I'd rather be leaning heavily in his direction than remotely towards Paul Krugman's

[Joseph Cox]

That's such a ridiculous thought. Paul Krugman may not be your favorite analyst- though I think being totally dismissive of him is pretty egotistical considering his stature and knowledge- but he at least backs everything up with actual analysis. You may disagree with his priorities, but he isn't just talking out of his ass. Paul is a feckless liar, grandstanding for outraged people who have absolutely no clue that they are just buying more snake oil.

[Christopher Carr]

I dismiss Krugman's "actual analysis" as built on a faulty premise, like the volumes and volumes of technical and philosophical discussion on the attributes of an imaginary being which comprised the Western Canon up until the Enlightenment; but I happen to think Paul believes what he says he believes. I can't really comment on the politics of Paul the Younger, but Paul the Elder has literally never voted for any deficit spending ever based on the principle that we don't steal from future generations, and whether or not you agree or disagree with that principle, calling so enprincipled politicians "feckless liars" and fellow Inductive writers "egotistical" because they reject the philosophical basis of your prescribed Keynesian spending spree is what is really ridiculous here. I think you could've written a perfectly good post without the ad hominem attacks.

[Joseph Cox]

Carr,

I'm not calling you an egotist, I'm saying that we are all neophyte economists compared to people like Paul Krugman. I may disagree with something that Gary Becker or Greg Mankiw says, but I sure as hell won't say that they don't know what they are talking about. They just value different things than me, which leads them to conclusions I find fault with. I see egotism in being dismissive, not in disagreement. There is a healthy space between deference and imagining Paul Krugman is an Emperor without any clothes on. I don't care what you think of Keynesianism and that didn't come up in my criticism. Krugman has pretty obvious biases, but he's a columnist not a political candidate.

Paul Sr. similarly escaped my criticism. However, I will note that he does earmark funds for his district before he votes against the budget. I understand the political calculus there- you can't be a Representative if you won't bring home any bacon- but I don't think it exactly speaks to the sort of principled stand for his values you describe. Sr. is a mostly harmless crank in the House whose "pox on both their houses" stance often shines light on issues that go ignored between the two parties. For that I think he is one of the most important people with little actual power in the country.

His son, meanwhile, has established that he has some beliefs that slide past idiosyncratic to nutty. He seems completely uninterested in compromising the purity of his convictions- no matter how absurd the conclusion that brings him to. We have all seen how much trouble a lone crank in the Senate can cause, and Paul is promising to be a particularly intransigent and deranged asshole. I thought that he would be a marginal improvement on the usual good ole boy from Kentucky, but at this point I'm pretty sure that he'll be worse. Politics is the art of the possible, and the Rand Paul's of the world make just about everything impossible.