But I'm also very suspicious of those who oppose certain policies -- say, the current House health care reform bill -- citing the deficit, only to turn around and vote for other costly programs (like, say, military interventions in other countries). Sen. Max Baucus danced this little pirouette earlier in the year, when he voiced concerns about the cost of health care reform, but then later blackballed any effort that would reduce federal farm subsidies, a truly absurd entitlement program crying for adjustment. If the deficit were the overriding concern, then those awful subsidies should have fallen by the wayside alongside Medicaid expansions and what not.
In an earlier discussion, we talked about the meaning of "begging the question," which doesn't mean "to raise a question," but to badly answer one (e.g.: "Why is this thing beautiful?" Answer: "Because it is pretty.").
There's something to that in the fiscal-deficit-argument. Instead of addressing specific political concerns with expenditures or programs, they simply answer that the containing the deficit matters more. At the same time, they don't say what they would cut to bring things in order (because that would actually force them to make choices).
Now, there are some who truly think the deficit matters more than anything else, but none of them lives in Washington, D.C. On the Republican side, supporting tax cuts outweighed any deficit qualms; on the Democratic side, stimulus and government programs count for more than silly issues with a long-term rise in interest rates.
You'd think they keep the deficits going if only because they provide a valuable political excuse to squirm their way out of standing for something.
I agree with a lot of your sentiment here. Farm subsidies are an abomination. I have little (if any) allegiance to the Republican party because of this sort of hypocrisy and stupidity. (Somewhat relatedly, why the hell didn't Republicans address health care reform when they were in power?)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, one comment I would make is that I note you often make remarks about foreign interventions and wars, casting them as if they are wars of choice, akin to other sorts of policy arguments (like government centered health care reform).
I reject this view of the major American interventions in recent history. Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq were wars of choice to my mind, at the time the decision to intervene was made. (I do not doubt that you view Iraq as entirely a war of choice; I would say that that is true only in hindsight).
Anyway, to this point, I would suggest that one can be a fiscal hawk and still advocate foreign intervention and war. Budgetary largesse and waste doesn't apply to essential functions of government, which national defense most certainly is.
Good point -- I actually only see the war in Iraq now as a war of choice, though in 2003, I didn't. Even later, I supported a very limited withdrawal because I thought it would pressure the local politicians and leaders to clean up their act.
ReplyDeleteBut it depends on whether you think health care reform, or any other legislative initiative pertaining to the people's welfare, counts only as "budgetary largesse and waste." Some would argue -- I would, at least -- that it's just as essential as national defense.
More on Joe Lieberman --
ReplyDeleteI actually don't buy his schtick that the Democratic Party somehow evolved into an unrecognizable dovish party since the 1960s, not least because the 1990s saw a much more interventionist wing emerge (and support President Bush in Afghanistan and, between 2003 and 2006-7, in Iraq).
I also found this piece of history illuminating, from a Salon.com piece:
"During the turmoil over the Vietnam War, a disastrous venture that Lieberman mentions only in passing, he became a leading peace activist in his home state -- a political stance that happened to comport nicely with his own ambitions at the time. He was a founding member of the dissident, antiwar Caucus of Connecticut Democrats, which supported the Rev. Joe Duffey's liberal primary challenge in 1970 against conservative Democratic incumbent Sen. Thomas Dodd, a Vietnam hawk. The young Lieberman, who had escaped the Vietnam draft with student and family deferments between 1961 and 1967, ran and won a seat in the state Senate that same year as a dovish liberal.
Many politicians who once opposed the war in Vietnam (or avoided military service) later adopted neoconservative positions when that became more fashionable. But Lieberman went considerably further in 1970, when he also happened to publish his now-forgotten first book -- an excursion into Cold War history titled "The Scorpion and the Tarantula." Ironically enough, that obscure tome was dug up and excoriated eight years ago on the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, when the Republican operatives who control that paper's editorial pages wanted to smear Lieberman, then running for vice president with Al Gore, as weak and unreliable."
See: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2008/05/23/lieberman/print.html
Jonathan Chait, of the New Republic, also nicely pointed out that Lieberman simply never subscribed to the Democratic Party's anti-Cold War ideas in Kennedy's day:
"Lieberman's history, which imagines a binary fight between hawks and isolationists, is woefully mistaken. In fact, during the cold war there were three camps: anti-interventionists on the left, liberal internationalists in the center, and hard-line anti-communists on the right. The left opposed the cold war. The center favored containment. The right deemed coexistence with communism unacceptable and advocated "rollback" of communism.
Lieberman's foreign policy views are in the tradition of the right, not the center. In the 1990s, he promoted "rogue state rollback," a neoconservative doctrine that's the direct lineal descendant of cold war rollback. Right-wing anti-communist hardliners opposed negotiations or arms control agreements with the enemy and, at various points, raged against Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan for their soft line."
See: http://www.tnr.com/article/irregular-joe
Oh Salon. Such a piece of crap (Some of it, anyway).
ReplyDelete"...Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, when the Republican operatives who control that paper's editorial pages wanted to smear Lieberman."
Republican operatives!?! How about "people who are conservative and probably have similar views to the Republican party"? Nah, that's much to fair. Let's assume they are disingenous political hacks...I wonder if they've ever written "The NY Times Op-Ed page, when the Democratic operatives who control that paper's editorial pages..."
Also, unless I'm mistaken to "smear" someone is to say something that isn't true. So is Salon suggesting that Lieberman in fact has was NOT Dovish? Well, no they aren't if your excert is any indication. I guess they just want to suggest that anything a "Republican" writes in criticism must be a smear...?
Also, regarding that trinary (I don't think that's a word, but it should be) Cold War camp idea...
ReplyDeleteI would argue that while it's technically accurate to say that the Left was "anti-Cold War," it's more accurate to note that that's because many were Pro-Soviet. That's significant.
In that sense, it strikes me as untrue to that a Cold-War dichotomy didn't exist. It did: It was between those who wanted to combat the influence of the Soviets and those who didn't. That there were differences in methods on the anti-Soviet side is somewhat a secondary discussion.