Tuesday, September 16, 2008

McCain’s Fiscal Fiasco: Brad DeLong is Not Happy with Martin Feldstein and John Taylor

A couple of weeks ago - Feldstein and Taylor claimed that McCain’s fiscal policy proposals would increase national savings and investment. Brad DeLong has finally read their WSJ op-ed and finds it really embarrassing:

Their willingness to roll over and tell spinmaster-generated lies is the principal reason why their successors as Republican economic policymakers will be scorned and ignored whenever the Republicans hold power--just as their predecessors' willigness to roll over and tell lies is the principal reason why they were scorned and ignored when they served in government.


The Feldstein-Taylor claim that likely set Brad off was the oft heard and never delivered proposition that a Republican Administration would pay for its promised tax cuts by drastically reducing the size of the government. Tax cuts financed by deficit spending, on the other hand, tend to reduce national savings and investment as noted here:

The McCain fiscal proposals amount to continued fiscal irresponsibility which will lower national savings leading to less investment and long-term growth. I’m shocked that these two gentlemen would lend their name to such free lunch supply-side silliness.


Since McCain nominated Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential running mate, the press has become more alert to their recent lies. I just wish that the press would spend more time on those supply-side lies that date back to the 1980 campaign by someone named Ronald Reagan.

2 comments:

rosserjb@jmu.edu said...

It really is amazing how the pure supply side kool aid has become this required drink for anybody who wants to run as a national level Republican or advise them. I guess what did this in was Bush, Sr. getting creamed for raising taxes and then all the GOP voting against the Clinton tax increases, leading to them taking over Congress, even though the recession many of them so loudly and definitively forecast to follow that did not occur (indeed the economy boomed).

But, this disjuncture from facts has been going on for some time and in many areas, although this may be the core lie at the bottom of it all, dating back to their "hero," Ronald Reagan, who at the end of his presidency had the gall to declare that there had never been a tax increase that raised money (going along with his rewriting of the "Iron Triangle" to consist of the Congress, the Special Interests, and the Media, rather than the Executive Agencies).

Anonymous said...

Um, Martin Feldstein is one of the Board of Directors for AIG.