America would have a more promising future if the “secret lusts” of centrist Democrats carried the day.
No, not those lusts. I mean the lust for fiscal restraint.
John Harris, founding editor of Politico, used that language to headline a recent piece of his that details how “fiscal discipline has gone from being a virtue to a sin” within the Democratic coalition.
Here’s Harris: “During the Biden transition, the long-time Democratic policy expert Bruce Reed saw his hopes of serving in the new administration imperiled by persistent rumors — subsequently confirmed by news organizations — that a decade ago he was intimately involved with the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Whoa …Talk about TMI.”
It’s funny because it’s true. The very notion of debt and deficits as constraining realities, much like the legislative filibuster and other consensus-demanding mechanisms in government, is a barrier to legislative freedom and to progress in the prevailing Democratic outlook.
The Congressional Budget Office gave an estimate on Thursday, an estimate that does not include in its calculation the $1.9 trillion Biden relief package, that federal debt will reach 102% of GDP in 2021. The last time federal debt exceeded GDP was after World War II ended. Meanwhile, subscribers to the debt-dismissive outlook would seem equipped only to say, “So what?”
Speaking of the relief package, there is some recognition among some more liberal voices that Biden and the Democrats are being insufficiently discriminate in their pricey relief package. Larry Summers, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, set some people off for raising concerns about potential inflationary pressure coming out of the package, at least given its lack of public investment.
On balance, Summers seems to be saying the package would be better to pass than not pass. Yet Summers still faced wrath from liberal columnists for even raising the question of whether Congress should do this. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shrugged him off.
Charles Lane of the Washington Post was even more overtly spending-conscious. “The impending budget surplus in California does create a new — better — argument against general federal support for states: Many don’t need it, because they are doing pretty well on their own,” Lane wrote in a recent column, saying later that “Biden’s $350 billion request seems high.” If Biden and the Democrats are mulling over this question of deservedness, they are keeping it private.
There seem to be only a few left on the Left who share Lane’s presupposition that the government has any reason to distinguish a worthy expenditure from an unworthy one. The Democratic officials and other voices who command the microphone at the moment and whose pressure from the Left sets the pace for policymaking aren’t at all interested in having that conversation and have little patience for those who are. They wanted to run Reed out of the Biden White House.
