GOP’s Deficit Crusade Faces Opposition From Fiscal Hawks

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http://washingtonindependent.com/78288/gops-deficit-crusade-faces-opposition-from-fiscal-hawks

GOP’s Deficit Crusade Faces Opposition From Fiscal Hawks
Experts Say Jobs Should Be Current Focus
By Mike Lillis 3/4/10 6:00 AM


Sen. Jim Bunning’s (R-Ky.) recent one-man stand against legislation extending unemployment benefits offered a high-profile airing of a popular GOP message: Deficit spending, in almost any form, will cause more harm than good to a fragile economy.

Standing in the way of the Republicans’ reasoning, however, has been another formidable group: budget experts. Most are urging additional, though temporary, deficit spending as the surest way to tackle the jobs crisis and prevent the economy from slipping back into recession. It hasn’t helped the GOP’s argument that a good number of them are fiscal conservatives.

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The message from the experts is clear: If you think adding $10 billion to the deficit is dangerous to future economic growth, wait ‘til you see what happens when millions of unemployed folks, denied access to a government safety net, slash their consumption (at best) and foreclose on their homes (at worst).

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Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and former advisor to Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), hasn’t overlooked the hypocrisy coming from GOP leaders who suddenly want to be recognized as champions of fiscal restraint.

“It astonishes me that a party enacting anything like the drug benefit would have the chutzpah to view itself as fiscally responsible in any sense of the term,” Bartlett wrote in Forbes recently. “As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt.”<.b>

It hasn’t stopped Bunning. The Kentucky Republican, who voted for the drug benefit, warned Democrats that he plans to play fiscal monitor as the majority party moves ahead this month with its job-creating agenda.

“I’ll be watching them closely,” he said Tuesday, “and checking off the hypocrites one by one.”