Once again Paul Krugman speaks the truth about Republican nonsense on the economy.
Style, Substance, and The Donald
So now the conventional wisdom is that we’re witnessing a temporary triumph of style over substance; Republican voters like Trump’s bluster, and haven’t (yet) realized that he isn’t making sense.
But if you ask me, the people who are really mistaking style for substance are the pundits. It’s true that Trump isn’t making sense — but neither are the mainstream contenders for the GOP nomination.
On economics, both Jeb Bush and Scott Walker are into deep voodoo. Bush takes his experience of presiding over a giant housing bubble in his state, as proof that he can double America’s underlying growth rate. Walker is Brownback-light: his governorship on Wisconsin was premised on the proposition that tax cuts, spending cuts, and union-bashing can create an economic miracle, but the reality is budget deficits and subpar growth, lagging in particular the performance of neighboring Minnesota.
Is Trump any worse on economics than these guys?
When it comes to economics the Republican Party is a one trick pony. Tax Cuts (for the Rich) are a central part of all the Republicans' economic policy prescriptions. After all they are the Party of the 1% so tax cut snake oil is their beverage of choice.
GOP presidential candidates will all call for tax cuts. Here’s why it matters.
Republican candidates are still consulting with supply-side guru Arthur Laffer. Scott Walker met with a group of high-level supply-siders in New York, in a meeting that mostly made news for Rudy Giuliani’s questioning whether Barack Obama loved America. But there are other voices among Republican candidates. While Jeb Bush has sworn his supply-side bona fides, Grover Norquist seems annoyed that he hasn’t signed an anti-tax pledge. Marco Rubio has co-sponsored a tax plan that emphasizes a large child tax credit and cuts the corporate rate, but that proposal might increase rates for some upper-middle-class individuals. All of the Republican candidates will support cutting taxes. Perhaps the Club for Growth or some big donors will support the more supply-side-minded contenders, but the differences will be small.
The other side of the tax cut coin is austerity for the Republican candidates, with many of the Republicans running calling for slashing government spending in what amounts imposing Greek style austerity on the US.
GOP austerity is a disaster of Greek proportions: Sam Brownback, Bobby Jindal & the economic scam of the century
America isn't Greece, but we can see in Kansas and Louisiana the disastrous consequences of Greek-style austerity
By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
Luckily for the U.S., after the financial crisis, the new president was able to pass some stimulus legislation early on and the austerity policies produced by political shenanigans in later years only succeeded in slowing the recovery, rather than killing it. In any case, America isn’t Greece. (And no, it never will be.)
But that doesn’t mean we have escaped a homegrown version of austerity in the laboratories of democracy where hard core conservatives have been happy to play with people’s lives for many of the same reasons the troika is playing with the lives of Greeks and Spaniards. Governors Sam Brownback and Bobby Jindal for instance, are teaching the good people of Kansas and Louisiana all about suffering. They are driven by an ideological commitment to cutting taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals, raising taxes on working people and cutting government services for everyone else. They too comfort their constituents with the bromide that in the long run everything will work out. And in the long run their constituents will also be dead.
All the GOP presidential candidates are running on some version of the austerity platform even as they promise tax cuts for rich and a growing economy that will result in everyone who votes Republican becoming millionaires. They will expect sacrifice, of course. That goes without saying. We have all these “strategic deficits” that will have to be taken care of first. But just as soon as we cut all that fat everything’s going to be just great.
The US deserves better than the Republicans simplistic notions on the economy that would comfort the already comfortable oligarchs, and call on the Middle Class and the working poor to make significant sacrifices to reduce the debt (partly created by their tax cuts.)