The Wretched Debt
Biden’s chief economist Jared Bernstein has a nice explainer on the purported unsustainability of the national debt. I have no quibbles with his details. I would like to paraphrase something I recall from the great Herbert Stein, namely, “If something can’t go on indefinitely, it won’t.”
The Deficit was the obsession of my entire misbegotten career. This period (1990-2009) was replete with hysteria and misinformation, not least from experts boasting elite credentials, and the baloney has never abated. (For an exemplary tidbit, check out the great Excel spreadsheet fiasco, all credit due to my comrades at the UMASS/Amherst Econ Dept.). On the level of analytics, Jared is on point. On politics, however, I’d say he misses the boat.
I’ve heard, and I don’t doubt, that the impact of the looming Trump tax cuts is much larger than previous rifts in the budget. Should we care? I would say no, though I’m regularly accused of being too jaded to appreciate the World of Shit in which we (the world) presently find ourselves.
My political take is that the Republicans are presently split between the traditional country club mob, who only want lower taxes and less regulation of their own depredations, and the new MAGA heads who blindly buy whatever the increasingly addled Mango Mussolini is selling.
What does Trump want? Adulation. Photographs with movie stars. Money. Babes and happy endings. To these ends, he wants troublesome problems pushed aside. Like Israel.
The House Republicans will have great difficulty agreeing on a budget and associated, humongous tax cuts. Trump wants a painless solution, big tax cuts, no cuts in Medicaid, love from all quarters. Not possible. My fearless forecast is they agree on nothing but the status quo until the eleventh hour (around September), at which point there is a fig leaf of a tax cut (in practice extending part of the Trump tax cuts) and something close to what is called “flat funding” (no or little increase or decrease in spending, absent any adjustment for inflation).
The actual net fiscal impact will get lost in the middle of the president’s unhinged, lying and bloviating. The media and Democrats will rant about The Deficit, and Nobody will care. So I am jaded.
I think Our Host has forgotten a third Republican faction: the goggle-eyed sorts who want to shrink federal government to the standard of 1890, minus the Interstate Commerce Commission. They're neither MATAts nor country clubbers. They're also quite capable of holding their breath until they turn blue, which may mean that nothing gets out of Congress. From their pov, no federal government at all is almost as good as an 1890 federal government.
The uncle debt burden can be resolved anytime
But won't
as long as
The end will be horror hoax
Is bought by
enough people enough of the time
Uncle S is about
To spend more good money
Frankly its the corporate dominated
wild west price system
We need to reformulate
Dispell
The Dornbusch curse !