I generally ignore Glenn Beck because I don’t want to do even a small part to give him the kind of attention he needs to make $32 million a year, but I just want to look at this one quote:
I don’t know if you have seen the debt clock, but the debt is unsustainable. We’re about to go out of business.
People who are only playing the political games will ask: Where were you when George Bush was spending? It doesn’t matter. I’m here now. Where are you now?
And before Dubya Bush, we might have asked where the budget hawks were when Reagan was spending. When Poppy Bush, in an effort at post-Reagan fiscal sanity, broke his ‘read-my-lips-no-new-taxes’ pledge, the ‘budget hawks’ threw him out of office.
What the American people need to understand about Republicans is that when they are out of power they are against any federal spending on anything other than weapons and immigration enforcement (better if these two things can be combined). But, when Republicans are in power, they spend freely and run up staggering debts. When the bill comes due and they get replaced by Democrats, they dismiss critics of their profligate spending by saying “It doesn’t matter. I’m here now,” and go right back to advocating balanced budgets.
In other words, now that they are no longer in control of the federal treasury, they are going back to their roots as an opposition party. But, even if you agree with them about the need to have a balanced budget, there is no reason to believe them when they say they will create one if put back in charge. They won’t. And there is a simple reason for that. They will never raise taxes even when the economic times call for tax hikes. In fact, they will reduce taxes to the maximum degree possible. But they won’t make corresponding cuts in federal programs. So, the result, every time, is staggering debt.
It pays to look at the conservative ideology as something that developed over decades in the minority in Congress. From the end of World War Two until 1995, the Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for a total of four years (1947-49 and 1953-55). So, modern conservative ideology is built on opposing the federal government’s spending priorities (and, really, any spending at all). It’s an ideology that takes no account of an actual governing ideology. Again, other than spending on weapons and a Great Wall of Mexico, they have no fiscal priorities besides tax cuts (primarily for the wealthiest). The Republicans spent so long not being able to control the purse strings that they lost any interest in arguing over how the money should be spent. They just want to take the money out of the purse. But, hand them the purse, and they’ll spend money just as lavishly as the Democrats and then they’ll max out the credit cards for good measure.
So, my answer to Glenn Beck is that he should go with his real calling: rodeo clown. It doesn’t pay as well, but he’d sleep better at night.
