Pawlenty: Let’s Plunge the Economy Into Depression
Because Republicans are judged by different standards, Tim Pawlenty’s proposal that “The GOP should lead efforts to cut up the nation’s credit card and commit to a balanced federal budget” will do absolutely nothing to harm his support among the business community or the notion that electing idiots like him to office will bolster economic growth. But it’s important to recognize that this neo-Hooverite agenda would, if enacted, likely plunge the world economy into a serious Depression.
At a time of economic slowdown, tax revenues will fall. Pawlenty would have the federal government offer no aid to state and local governments, forcing them to slash services and raise taxes, further deepening the slowdown. And then we’d need to cut the federal budget sharply, even further deepening the slowdown. And then next year tax revenues would come in even lower, and we’d need another round of counterproductive cuts. It’s just staggering that a leader who’s generally regarded as less economically bonkers than your average conservative would put this forward as the centerpiece of his economic vision.
37 Responses to “Pawlenty: Let’s Plunge the Economy Into Depression”
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December 11th, 2008 at 2:45 am
“Less economically bonkers,” of course, is a comparative phrase. You’re still talking about a guy who thought it would be neato to have his lieutenant governor also be in charge of the state DOT because they would be paying only one salary instead of two. Or for that matter, that it would be a cool idea to build all these new roads without taking adequate care of the existing infrastructure.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:55 am
You sound surprised, which is surprising. These guys believe cutting taxes and spending is always the solution to anything. Why would you expect anything different?
They are judged by a different standard because, under the media consensus considers the debate between mainstream fiscal macroeconomics and Lafferite nuttery one where opposing views are to be transcribed, not analyzed.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Wonder if he’ll cut up his own, or heroically refuse any state aid that comes on down….
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2008/12/01/daily36.html
December 11th, 2008 at 6:58 am
This is just more GOP “build a tunnel back to the 19th century” stuff
December 11th, 2008 at 9:02 am
At least with bold leadership like Pawlenty’s, we wouldn’t be wasting a lot of money trying to keep bridges, overpasses, and tunnels from collapsing and we’d let the free market in gravity decide.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:37 am
You could have made this post simpler by pointing out that Pawlenty is backed by the Club for Growth. As anyone knows, they are anti-tax zealots. Theirs is a recipe for depressions, not economic growth. Thus endeth the sermon.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:44 am
The best response: who gives a fuck what he thinks?
Elections have consequences, and economic fucktards no longer get to call the shots.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:50 am
I hope at some point in the current mess, as we push the Pawlentys off to the shoulder of the road, there will be a thorough airing of how unfathomably ludicrous is the notion of a balanced budget amendment. Only people so economically illiterate as to be totally ignorant of Keynesian doctrine and pretty much all of the economic history of the last century can even entertain the idea.
December 11th, 2008 at 9:52 am
My late Great Uncle Vic would call him Pawlenty empty. I prefer Less than 50 cent as he has never won state office with over 50 percent.
What you don’t know, is that he also doesn’t want to raise taxes in the state. He says, or will say we have a spending problem.
He uses accounting gimmickry to not raise taxes, I think one DFL said it is like putting wallpaper over rotted drywall. It looks good right now, but doesn’t solve the underlying problem, and we have had that going on for 6 years now.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:15 am
This is just another move from the Republican playbook. The idea is to appeal to the unwashed masses who think that this makes sense. The conservatives who do understand what is wrong with it are supposed to understand that its just talk, not an actual policy to be implemented.
The question of which group Pawlenty is in is left as an exercise for the reader.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am
So he thinks that not only is this the right thing to do, but that it will make the Republicans the majority party once more?
What’s the matter with Minnesota?
December 11th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Essentially, what DTM said. The deficit fighting rhetoric is high-minded cover for pursing a strategy of obstructionism. If Reps succeed in blocking significant parts of the deflation fighting policy and things don’t improve in 2-4 years, Reps will be the party of change. If they don’t succeed, inflation will likely be the problem and they can say, hey we warned ya.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:00 am
The assumption here is that any proposal coming out of the leadership of the modern GOP is something other than a thin attempt to gull the rubes.
That assumption is false.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Wreck the economy, then get your press buddies to blame it on Obama.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Like people have said: What, this surprises you?
Republicans are the party of preventing government from working, consequences for the country be damned.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:08 am
You should link you earlier post about Mike Pence being on board for recommending neo-Hooverism as well.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Yeah, I’m with DTM too, but to expand the thought, I don’t think Republicans or the right generally has any idea what to do. In the absence of any kind of plan, you get verbal tics.
December 11th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
So, now that Jindal has bowed out, and Pawlenty and Palin have disqualified themselves– how do we shut down Huckabee?
December 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
“The GOP should lead efforts to cut up the nation’s credit card and commit to a balanced federal budget”
What, just like the GOP did for the last eight years? What utter hypocritical trash talk.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
And all of this results in lost jobs for civil servants–social workers, construction workers, college professors at public schools, bus drivers… Because in a serious recession, what we need more of is layoffs.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
DC Bob nails it.
Funny how the GOP is all about the balanced Budget Amendment as soon as a Democrat is in office but hwile they control all 3 branches of government? not so much.
The chief argument against the BBA is that you can’t run a governemnt that way, you need deficit spending during bad times and then make it during good times. The problem we have is when there are bad times we vote for Dems for the defecit spending and then when the economy gets good again we vote for the Reps who don’t do the prudent part.
You could say that Democrats manage the economy well enough to make it safe to elect republicans again:-) Pence and Pawlenty are blowng it becasue they are supposed to wait until the economy starts improving to start the we need to balance the budget blather.
December 11th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Hoover was not a laissze-faire free-marketer, and he helped to extend the Depression by policies such as trying to set price floors and trying to prevent wage decreases. He also presided over interest rate cuts by the Fed and a loose-money policy, all designed to “stimulate” the economy.
Please Matt, stop trying to imply that us free-marketers are disciples of Hoover. We are not. Hppver’s policies were not fee-market, conservative policies, and in many ways prefigured the New Deal.
STOP LYING ABOUT HOOVER, MATT.
December 11th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Pawlenty is smart enough to know that this is garbage, and yes, he’ll gladly accept whatever aid the feds offer. This is just cheap posturing on Pawlenty’s part to get in good with return-to-Goldwater crowd, which distrusts him for raising the cigarette tax in 2005 and renaming it a “health impact fee,” and for his reputation in the press as a “moderate.”
Pawlenty won by 44%-36% in 2002 over a lackluster DFL opponent. An independent candidate who was a former Democrat running on a “fiscal conservative” platform took 16%. Pawlenty won reelection in 2006 by 47%-46% over a DFLer who ran into a wall of negative publicity the last week of the election, and with yet another Democrat running a silly independent vanity campaign taking 6% of the vote. Pawlenty has thus far been extremely fortunate to have faced such a fucking inept opposition.
Meanwhile, in the Minnesota state legislature, the Republican caucuses have lost members in the last three election cycles, all of them while Pawlenty has been Governor.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
To expand on DTM’s comment. The conservative movement has not had a real answer to America’s issues since the great depression, and has only succeeded by NOT being in a position to implement such plans. Reagan attempted to implement conservative philosophy, and although his rhetoric was uplifting and he did burn away much dead wood from the great society, his policies of trickle down economics were such failures that he had to reverse his taxation policies while still in office! The only other conservative to hold office and enact conservative policy was GWB, and we all know how that has turned out.
Conservative economic theory’s appeal is limited to the people who want to read book covers but not bother with the whole book (or sound biters if you prefer), and the rich who believe they have divine rights to wealth and that their success is purely based on merit and thus any policies increasing their wealth are justified based on their inherent merit. We all know that the advent of personal credit has allowed the development of a midlleclass(via mortgages, small business loans, etc..) even if at times the misuse of that credit has gotten us into trouble. If simpletons insist that the US should have a balanced budget because individual must balance theirs, then we should ask them if they have mortgages, or take out loans for businesses and call them out for being the hypocrites that they are.
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