Jodi Kantor's New York Times profile of Obama OMB director Peter Orszag includes this bit of unjustified snark:
A former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Mr. Orszag is what passes in the Democratic Party for a deficit hawk.
"[W]hat passes in the Democratic Party for a deficit hawk"? Is Kantor aware of the fiscal policy record of Democratic and Republican presidents in the United States over the last 28 years? It's not particularly favorable to the idea of Republicans as deficit hawks:
For her next story, I would encourage Kantor to seek out all the true deficit hawks in the GOP. I'm sure absolutely none of them supported President Bush's massive deficit-enhancing tax cuts.
It's eye-opening to see how much larger the Rep deficits were than the Dem deficits during the graphed period. Thanks for the chart, Brendan.
However, Kantor's snarky comment used the present tense. Obama and the Dem Congressional majority will run a deficit in their first 2 years larger than the combined deficits of 28 years of Republican Presidents shown on the chart.
Furthermore, Democratic attitude justifies Kantor's slam. Few Dems are objecting as Obama and Congress propose to spend trillions of dollars to bail out banks, insurance companies, and automobile manufacturers, to give hundreds of billions to Dem special interests, to increase the troop level in Afghanistan, to offer government-paid medical care, etc. There were Dem deficit hawks in the past (e.g., when Bush was President) but there are few today. The snarky comment was deserved.
Posted by: David | March 28, 2009 at 07:43 PM