The Deficit-Hawk Blues
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
MARCH 13, 2009
I would describe it as a good beginning.
-- Sen. Conrad, February 2009, commenting on President Barack Obama's 2010 budget.Projected deficit: $1.75 trillion.
If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, silver and bronze.
-- North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, July 2008, commenting on a projected 2009 deficit of $482 billion.
If you thought being a spend-happy president in the middle of a recession was hard, consider that it could always be worse. You could, instead, be one of Congress's self-acclaimed deficit hawks.
Spare a special thought for Mr. Conrad, head of the budget committee, and lead vocalist on the horror of deficits "as far as the eye can see." These days, the senator would need the Kepler telescope to keep track of his own president's past and proposed spending -- 99.9% of which the good senator can't wait to move out the government door. Still, he and his fellow deficit scolds have their reputations to consider. And it's getting darn hard to keep up appearances.
Gone, after all, is good ole George W. Bush, who for eight reliable years provided these folks with a convenient foil for their own largess. Our budget woes are the result of "deficit-financed tax cuts tilted to benefit the wealthiest," fretted Mr. Conrad (even as he proposed another $5 billion farm bailout). This line also proved useful whenever the spenders wanted to forestall further tax relief, lest those proposals get in the way of their own spending ambitions.
But lo, now we have a new president, with a new budget, and plenty of tax hikes. Even after the administration rips away the Bush tax cuts for the "wealthy" and limits their deductions, and levies a monstrous middle-class tax on carbon, and hammers the investor class with higher taxes on capital, and squeezes money out of dead people, it still can't get anywhere near filling its budget hole.
Gone are the days when certain red-state Democrats could claim they could cover all this spending by closing the "tax gap." Worse, at some point the public might just work out that all this red ink is -- as it ever was -- a direct result of booming government growth.
Gone, too, are Congressional Republicans, whose own irresponsible spending throughout the Bush years gave Democrats an opening to pose as fiscal stewards, and to justify repealing the Bush tax cuts. These GOP-authored budgets mean "more debt passed on to our children. These aren't my values," wailed Mr. Conrad in early 2006, back when the deficit was, oh, 2.8% of GDP. By the end of 2006, Democrats had used that cry to help regain control of Congress.
Which they still control. As they now do the White House. Which presumably helps to explain why their values have now come to accommodate a 2010 deficit estimated at, oh, 12.3% of GDP. Luckily for Mr. Conrad, none of the nation's debt-laden children can yet vote. Though presumably at least some of the grown-ups are paying attention to who in Congress is today writing the checks.
All of which is necessitating that those who were once against the deficit (even as they were for it) today engage in some amusing fiscal footwork. The stimulus, for instance, required all the deficit worrywarts to convene a high-profile bipartisan group that spent days clucking over the House's bill, and vowing to scrub it of "waste." They emerged with legislation that was $20 billion larger than the House's version, though they explained that without all their sweat it could've been much, much worse.
Mr. Conrad, for his part, has been reminding everyone that he was a key player at the president's Fiscal Responsibility Summit -- which took place somewhere after his votes for the $33 billion increase in children's health insurance and $787 billion stimulus, though before his vote for the $410 billion omnibus and its 9,000 earmarks. He's also been talking about the deficit Mr. Obama "inherited," just to keep things in perspective as his committee works on the president's $3,600,000,000,000 budget blueprint. And he's noting that this budget requires all Americans to sacrifice (even as he reassures his farmers that such sacrifice will absolutely not -- over his dead body! -- include Mr. Obama's suggested cut in agricultural subsidies).
The North Dakotan has also made clear he's still very much riveted on the deficit, and praised Mr. Obama for seeking to cut that number in half over five years. Of course, one-half of absolutely enormous equals a hell of a lot -- in this case, a 2013 deficit of $533 billion. Still, the budget chair noted he was far more concerned that it only went downhill from there, and warned the president he'd like to see "further progress" on that back-end.
Much more fun is yet to come, if the press deigns to take notice. Meanwhile, the fiscal disciplinarians struggle on. Spending all the way.
Write to kim@wsj.com
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