The usual Sunday parade of Republican mouthpieces showed some skill in giving the impression that they are a serious source of advice on the economy. In order to make their arguments without going pink in the face, as George Will did, when Donna Brazille skewered him on This Week today, they had to have undergone some convenient amnesia. And it's a kind of amnesia that goes way, way back. Without digressing into the FDR arguments, let's just look at some of their recent economic insights and opinions, shall we? Once you look at how they scored in the past, I think you'll see the need for some convenient amnesia on their part.
- Back in 1993, Bill Clinton, without a single vote from any Republican, increased taxes to get control of the deficit because it was competing with the need for capital by the private sector. Every Republican confidently and loudly predicted that economic disaster awaited and that business would collapse under the weight of these crushing taxes. The result? 8 million new jobs, the longest peacetime expansion in history, lowest unemployment, lowest poverty rate, and a budget surplus for the first time in decades. We ended out the 90's with the best economic numbers ever created by any administration. That had to hurt the Republicans, right? They must have had to eat some crow on that one, right? Well, when you have Convenient Amnesia®, you don't have to worry; it's like it never happened.
- The Iraq War. If Bush had come to the American people in 2003 and told them that he was going to spend over a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq, what do you think they would have said? When Bush kept coming back to the Republican Congress with "emergency requests" for more funding - $75 billion here, $50 billion there - in order to keep the war appropriations out of the budget, did Republicans - wise stewards of the people's money say, "Hey, wait a minute! You're not budgeting honestly, Mr. President. And what about all the waste and corruption going on with contractors?" The Republican Congress just help shovel the money out the door to service a costly unnecessary war. You'd think that Republicans would be mightily embarrassed to have so strongly supported trillions of dollars on a quixotic invasion of another country, while not supporting lower expenditures on rebuilding America and protecting the vulnerable. But, hey, when you have Convenient Amnesia®, you don't have to worry; it's like it never happened.
- When America looked to the SEC to find out how hundreds of crooked firms and individuals ruined the financial integrity of the banking system, they found Chris Cox, loyal Republican, asleep at the helm. They found that the SEC basically had been tranquilized. When they looked around at other agencies, they found the same thing. Republicans "in charge" who either corrupted the agency they were in charge of or just didn't do their job at all (how ya doin', Brownie?). You'd think that Republicans would just be too embarrassed to be offering advice about fixing the banking system, since they are the ones who did the most to break it. But, when you have Convenient Amnesia®, you don't have to worry; it's like it never happened.
I would like to see someone - some so-called pundit on TV - just once break through the fog of Convenient Amnesia® exhaled by the usual gang of Republican shills and call them on it.