Deficit Hawks = Scum (Part Two)

My new Facebook status brings up an old (but sadly still relevant) theme...

Matthew Rozsa
Consumer spending is 70% of the American economy; therefore recovery depends on putting more money in the pockets of average Americans vis-a-vis unemployment reduction. Despite that fact, every feasible strategy for stimulating job growth has been impeded by the deficit hawks.
I can't say this too many times: Deficit hawks do NOT simply have a "different point-of-view". They are lying shills of the rich - i.e., scum.

Matthew Rozsa
PS: To any self-identified deficit hawks who read that post and are offended... good.

Although you smugly insist that expertise validates your position, you are disgustingly glib in your dismissal of any facts that contradict your pre-decided conclusions - which is especially convenient for you, since that pretty much encompasses ALL facts. What's more, although you claim to be worried about the health of the American economy, the policies you advocate clearly prove that you are more worried about the prosperity of the privileged - from Wall Street stock brokers and bond traders to big businesses and just the generally wealthy (a.k.a., "the top 5%") - than you are the standard-of-living for middle-class and working-class Americans. Even worse, you will take this preference to such an extreme that you will knowingly push for policies that cause harm to the latter - cutting unemployment benefits, refusing to provide aid to the states (especially for public schools), fighting against economic stimulus adequate to create jobs - just so you can put a few more dollars in the pockets of the former.

There are only two kinds of deficit hawks:
1) Those who are soulless shills of the American plutocracy, and who couch their arguments in the rhetoric of populism and pseudo-pragmatism so as to make them more saleable to the public.
2) Those who, though honest and well-meaning in their intentions, have been duped by the first group.

If you fall into the second category, then feel free to read a debate - which has not been edited or altered by me in any way - between myself and some deficit hawks, one that I believe (arrogant though this may sound) will help you realize the utterly void nature, intellectually and morally, of everything they have to say.

http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2010/06/deficit-hawks-scum.html

If, on the other hand, you fall into the first category - i.e., if you are a "deficit hawk" who salivated with joy at giving the wealthy a $1.3 trillion tax cut under George W. Bush (thus squandering the budget surplus left by Bill Clinton, which those "nutty" liberals wanted to use to the balance the deficit, given that this was a time of prosperity during which such measures could be afforded) and LOVES spending additional trillions of dollars on the military and the war on drugs, but who bellows in rage at the thought of spending a fraction of that amount to help the unemployed (first through temporary benefits and then, via stimulus, through the creation of permanent jobs) and our children (by providing aid to our states so our public education system doesn't have to make drastic cuts that significantly reduces its quality) - well, you are scum. That is the only worthwhile observation which could ever be made about you.

I'd like to end with a quote from the congressional testimony of Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO

The goal of our national economic policy should be sustainable, broadly shared prosperity. To achieve that goal, there is no question that we need to stabilize the national debt as a share of our economy over the long term. But stabilizing the debt is simply a means to achieve our goal of sustainable, broadly shared prosperity, and we should reject approaches to debt stabilization that take us away from that goal.

Oh, and this...

"According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “The tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.” And “without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade.”

For the remainder of his very insightful remarks, see:
http://www.ourfuture.org/node/47454