Monday, January 03, 2011

The Big Lie

Robert Reich wrote The Big Lie. "Republicans are telling Americans a Big Lie, and Obama and the Democrats are letting them. The Big Lie is our economic problems are due to a government that’s too large, and therefore the solution is to shrink it."

This is my problem with the Democrats. The entire debate is framed in GOP terms and many of them are absurd. Krugman walked through some of it in The New Voodoo. "To be sure, there were renewed claims that tax cuts lead to higher revenue. But 2010 marked the emergence of a new, even more profound level of magical thinking: the belief that deficits created by tax cuts just don’t matter. For example, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona — who had denounced President Obama for running deficits — declared that 'you should never have to offset the cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.'"

The Democrats, and that means Obama, have to stand up and explain why they are right. When the other side is crazy, that shouldn't be difficult. It's part of why I'm dissatisfied even though this last Congress accomplished a good amount. They completely lost the debate. So now we have to relive all the debates again as the GOP tries to repeal healthcare. They got their tax cuts and won't cut spending so the deficits will stay large and they'll be able to spout their exact same lies yet again. Until someone stands up and calls them on it.

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