Drum on Faux Deficit Hawks

Kevin Drum challenges the depiction of Congressional Republicans as deficit hawks in two posts on his Mother Jones blog.

(T)here are lots of members of Congress who are willing to talk endlessly about deficits, but there are very, very few who are willing to publicly support specific cuts. There are fewer still who are willing to publicly support cuts that might affect any of their own constituents. And there are fewer still who have shown any inclination to actually vote for serious cuts when they've had the power to do so. So: no bloc of deficit hawks.

and

On the scale of the federal budget, $18 billion is a rounding error. Literally. It's about one-half of one percent of the budget, which rounds down to zero. But a small group of moderate Republicans are threatening to vote no on financial reform because an $18 billion fee is included in the final bill. It's not there to punish banks or to create a slush fund for new spending. It's there solely to make the bill deficit neutral.

And I suppose it would worry them if there were any actual deficit hawks in the Republican Party. But there aren't, are there? There are plenty of tax-on-rich-people-and-corporations hawks, but no deficit hawks. Let's stop pretending otherwise, OK?

I agree with both. The GOP have no credibility on this issue. They didn't bat an eye while going along with Bush running up a big deficit. Now they cry about the deficit but absolutely refuse unpopular spending cuts or a tax increase of any kind. Drum's Avent quote is dead on re: the impossibility of reducing the deficit on spending cuts alone. The GOP have become completely cynical and political. Conservative blogger David Frum has said that as long as Republicans care about politics while Democrats care about governing, his party is in big trouble. That is why I agree with Frum that Republican optimism for the 2010 mid-terms and 2012 general election is wildly inflated.

--Ballard Burgher