Off their meds...

At the beginning of the week Congressman Ryan proposed to reduce the federal budget roughly back to the levels of 2008.   That does not bring the budget back to reasonable levels, at least by most calculations.  But to give you an idea about the state of the discussion, one need only listen to the H&R Block's last minute ads for their tax services.  Evidently, the tax firm will get you "everything you are entitled to" - Doesn't that logic bother you?  It does me.   The only way it would make sense is to assume that wealth is created by the government.  That is nonsense. Evidently a lot of Americans buy that crap.  Wealth is not created by government policy but it sure is inhibited by it.   For the last several years (not the last two) we have had a growing Leviathan in the best sense of Hobbes.  We need to have a serious discussion and then some serious moves to reduce the spending binge.

Government spending has exploded.  Debt has grown at monster proportions.   But some of the Washington cognizanti have the notion imbedded that it is their dough and we peons better not take any of it back - no matter how horribly they have screwed it up.

On Wednesday, Isabell Sawhill, former Urban Institute staffer and now at Brookings came unhinged in an article in the lefty emag called Democracy Journal when she screamed Ryan's proposal is "an ideological manifesto for a Tea-Party-dominated Republican Party."  When you cannot argue substance you argue slogans.  

Any competent economist understands that in the current situation that additional government spending is actually a drag on economic growth.    Yet, Sawhill is incredulous that reducing federal spending would actually increase economic growth.   We ballooned federal spending for the last few years and growth did not jump ahead.  Some reduction in unemployment but huge increases in underemployment.  Accelerating inflation that everyone but the Wonks in DC seem to think is a problem of not whether but when.   But Sawhill's prescription would be to continue on the path.

We've really got a choice.  We could continue to listen to the panderers for more spending like Sawhill and then just sit back and watch the American economy be destroyed.  Or we can begin to think about how to get out of this mess.  From my perspective that is not much of a choice.  Perhaps we should simply let the government shut down and see if we miss it.