Thank you, David Brooks! Until today, the Progressive "Back to Work" Budget has been a tree falling in a deserted forest. But this morning, through the "good" graces of David Brooks and "Morning Joe," millions will hear about it! Of course, Brooks and Scarborough attack it as "extreme" but now it's out there. You can't have an Overton window when the score is 72,000 to 2 Ryan v. Progressive Budget hits on google, but that will change!
Below Joe and his "balanced," yet somehow sycophantic panel bemoaning the budget and radical crazies like Paul Krugman and Nancy Pelosi. Here's how it starts. Joe:
There is an extreme element now in the Democratic party that gives me hope, as a Republican, and I'll just say it. It starts with Paul Krugman, and Nancy Pelosi -- I love Nancy, but she says we don't have a spending problem."
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Joe's panel of Iraq war supporters, including David Ignatuis and Richard Haase gravely agree with Joe.
Of course the Brooks article itself is a combination of his usual sophistry, garbled history and hyperbole. For example, Brooks writes:
Now, of course, liberals have always believed in Keynesian countercyclical deficit spending. But that was borrowing to brake against a downturn when certain conditions prevail: when the economy is shrinking; when debt levels are low; when there are plenty of shovel-ready projects waiting to be enacted; when there is a large and growing gap between the economy’s current output and what it is capable of producing.
Right David -- except -- we are not completely out of the recession, there are projects (even if not "shovel ready") desperate for help (70,000 defective bridges, David?) and there is a gap between output and production (Corps sitting on cash), and the top rate in the Progressive Budget is much less than Ike's top rate.
But most significantly, tax policy favoring the wealthy is a prime cause of disastrous inequality.