Cafeteria Keynesianism
by digby
Eric Cantor is giving Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich a run for their money as slimiest Republican congressional leaders in history. He isn’t quite as aggressive as those two, but he has an even worse quality — a lugubrious sanctimony, which only Mike Pence’s furrowed brow and phony compassion rivals for sheer oiliness.
And hypocrisy, needless to say, is his fundamental characteristic. Take this, for example, from Jonathan Cohn at TNR:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, restoring the “Medicaid discount” for low-income seniors could save more than $100 billion over the course of a decade, depending on the structure of the proposal. And, at one point, many health care reformers had hoped to include that proposal as part of what became the Affordable Care Act. The administration and leaders of the Senate Finance Committee agreed not to include the proposal in the final legislation, as part of their infamous deal with the drug industry lobby. But that was a one-time deal, at least in theory, and congressional negotiators are looking seriously at enacting the proposal now.
The problem is lawmakers like Cantor, who oppose the idea. According to the Politico story, written by Matt Dobias, Cantor is making the same argument that the drug industry lobby does: That the proposal would amount to a form of government price controls, retarding economic growth and discouraging innovation.
I just love this cafeteria Keynesianism. We can’t raise taxes because it would hurt the economy at a time of low demand. But we can slash the hell out of spending (as it doesn’t affect a favored industry) because the economy is dragging due to “expectations” and “confidence” not demand.
Cantor is no tea partier and cares nothing for spending and deficits. He is simply a tool of business who seeks to take your tax dollars and give them to the wealthy.Just like all the Republican leaders. I think that if we understand that, we understand his negotiating position much better.
Read the whole article for the sickening details. Like a bad dream, this deficit kabuki dance has morphed into a writhing orgy of deceit and double dealing.
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