Matt Yglesias

McConnell: Hanging Out With Rush Limbaugh is Awesome

Sarah Posner reports from CPAC:

In his CPAC speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that conservatives are more “interesting” and “fun” than liberals. Here’s his proof: “who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich when you can be with Rush Limbaugh?”

The extent to which the formal political leaders of the Republican Party are eager to go this far out of their way to embrace Rush Limbaugh is interesting. But there are more Rush fans than Mitch fans:

Just yesterday, Rush once again reiterated his hope that the economy continues to tank because that would be bad for Barack Obama’s reelection prospects.

McConnell Warns of American Dystopia — More Equality, Less Poverty, Longer Life Expectancy

Just saw Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) on TV warning that the stimulus plan will “turn America into Western Europe.” Terrifying. I just hope we get some nice public gardens like this one I saw in Barcelona:

Western Europe has its pros and cons relative to the United States and since it represents a diversity of different policy environments it doesn’t even really make sense to talk about adopting “European” policies. Still, it strikes me as odd that conservatives seem so convinced that a set of countries whose populations are healthier and longer-lived, and where dramatically fewer children grow up in poverty, is somehow obviously a dystopian nightmare. Indeed, even at the time when living standards really were clearly higher in the United States and tons of Europeans were eager to move here, the people of old continent were hardly clamoring to get into the glamorous world of Kentucky.

Here’s Amsterdam:

Beware!

McConnell: Spending Can’t Work Except When It Can

Mitch McConnell studies history and reaches the conclusion that we should hope for a German campaign of world conquest:

“But one of the good things about reading history is you learn a good deal. And, we know for sure that the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work. In 1940, unemployment was still 15%. And, it’s widely agreed among economists, that what got us out of the doldrums that we were in during the Depression was the beginning of World War II.”

To be precise, the historical record shows that throughout FDR’s first term, the country was on a path to recovery—albeit from a very low point. Then there was a recession-within-a-depression associated with efforts to return to McConnell-style policies of fiscal restraint. By 1940, things were much better than they had been in 1932. But still, as he says, not very good. Thus far we don’t have a very solid case against stimulus spending. And now things get worse. The conclusion McConnell wants is that “big spending programs” couldn’t help fight the Depression. But World War II was, among other things, a huge spending program. At the moment, however, we’re fortunate not to be in a position where there’s a powerful wehrmacht that needs fighting. So we can try to direct our recovery-oriented spending at useful civilian projects that will improve the country’s infrastructure or health or education rather than on tanks and bombs.

McConnell’s Middle Class

On Sunday, Mitch McConnell’s proposed cutting the 25 percent income tax rate to 15 percent, which he described as a move to help the middle class. As usual with conservative tax proposals, this is true as long as you see “the middle class” as primarily composed of extremely wealthy people. Ben Furnas points to new analysis from the Tax Policy Center:

As economic stimulus, meanwhile, anything that — like McConnell’s proposal — would do nothing at all for folks earning less than $40,000 is a terrible idea. You need to direct tax relief at people who have a high propensity to spend a marginal dollar, even in a climate when there are some deflationary expectations. That means first poor people, second middle class people, and not at all the $2.8 million a year crowd that McConnell’s trying to help out.