Now this sounds like a good idea:
The Obama administration has alerted domestic agencies to plan for a freeze or even a 5 percent cut in their budgets, part of an election-year push to rein in record deficits that threaten the economy and Democrats’ political prospects next fall.
White House budget director Peter Orszag said Friday that it is imperative to start curbing the flow of red ink in coming years so as not to erode the fledgling economic recovery and raise interest rates. But he called it a balancing act and said acting too fast could undercut the recovery.
Uh, yeah, cutting public spending while the private sector is increasingly cutting jobs and health insurance and turning people out on the street? That definitely could undercut this so called "recovery," though I haven’t seen any signs that it’s actually started in the first place.
Just ask FDR, who actually did start a revolutionary recovery before, uh, deficit hawks concerned with re-election got in his shit and nearly ruined the whole thing:
By 1937, the depression had eased somewhat and FDR sought to balance the budget by cutting government spending. But in the fall and winter of 1937-38, conditions worsened again, partly because of these cuts, and FDR had to seek additional funds to meet the crisis.
I know that Washington, D.C. is its own world with its own bizarro values, but I’m pretty sure that, when it comes down to pulling a lever in the voting booth next year, American citizens are gonna be thinking whether they have a job or health insurance or a fucking house, not whether the invisible deficit is being paid down to the Chinese.
Or, they could cut the defense budget, as David Sirota suggests, but that would just be insane!
It’s really almost laughable sometimes.
Cross-posted at JordanZakarin.com