Fiscally Conservative when it’s Convenient

Bonddad has a fun post at the Orange Devil about the Republican Party’s dedication to “fiscal dicipline”.

The long and the short of it is that since 2000 the national debt has increased by over $4.4t. While the Republicans had control of the White House and the Congress, not to mention the budgeting process, the national debt increased some $3.2t. The final $1.2t came largely in the last year or so of an administration that was hell bent on destroying any stability in the US economy over its 8 years in office.

The truth of the matter is that fiscal conservatives, this includes ALL Republicans, and many of the Blue Dog/New Democrat folks, are only interested in being fiscally conservative when it suits them. If they like spending on the Military, then all that PAYGO nonsense is out the window until someone asks for healthcare for children, then it’s back to PAYGO.

We need to start calling things what they are. Either you are unconditionally a fiscal conservative, or you have some other motive that moves you to play a fiscal conservative when it suits you politically or socially, or whatever. That conservativeness may be rooted in assisting corporate interests, maintaining class structures, or in a level of true fiscal discipline that we haven’t seen since the Clinton years, and didn’t see before the Clinton years in any Republican administration from their hey day (back to the 1981 Reagan years). But you either are or you’re something else. That something else may make you feel uncomfortable when you get called it. Just saying.

0 Replies to “Fiscally Conservative when it’s Convenient”

  1. The (current) Republican Party fiscally conservative? Haha…that’s a hoot!!!

    You’re dead on…you either are, or you aren’t fiscally conservative.

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