Sen. Coburn's underlying logic goes to the heart of the
snake oil that Republicans are selling the American people these days.
There’s an almost
biblical irony to Oklahoma’s latest tornado disaster. Not a funny irony, but
the grim, tragic kind so common to acts of God.
Four months before
this twister, five of Oklahoma’s seven members of Congress — including both of
its senators — all Republicans, had voted against a bill providing funds to
states hit by Superstorm Sandy. They thought that the money, $50 billion of it,
should come from cuts in other federal programs, not fresh borrowing.
“That was totally different,” said James Inhofe, one of the chief conservative blowhards in the Senate. “They were getting things, for instance, that was (sic) supposed to be in New Jersey. They had things in the Virgin Islands…Everybody was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place. That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”
Right. Far be it from
Oklahoma to take advantage of federal money…unless, of course it comes in the
form of subsidies for oil and gas companies or huge farms.
As I indicated, not
all of the Oklahomans were Sandy deniers. Rep. Tom Cole, for example, voted to support
the relief bill and said, at the time:
“Each member ought to
recognize at some point his or her area will be hit by some disaster and they
will be here seeking support.”
Cole, in another
ironic twist, happens to live in Moore, the very nearly destroyed town where
the tornado hit.
And yet, the whole
Oklahoma delegation didn’t go all hypocritical on us. That pillar of rectitude,
Sen. Tom Coburn, said that the disaster that befell his fellow Oklahomans
hadn’t changed his mind about anything. (Coburn, who voted against the
Superstorm Sandy relief bill in January, also insisted on offsets so that no
new money would be appropriated for the victims of the 1995 bombing of the
federal building in Oklahoma City.)
He sent his spokesman
out to say that the Oklahoma Republican continued to stick to his demand that relief
funds be offset by
cuts in the budget elsewhere.
“If the choice is
between borrowing and reducing spending on largesse,” Coburn’s spokesman said,
“we should divert funds from largesse to victims.”
Which sounds fine, but
what happens — realistically — is that the funds get cut from programs that
benefit groups with weak lobbies, like kids and poor people. Corporate largesse
remains large.
But Coburn’s
underlying logic goes to the heart of the snake oil that Republicans are
selling the American people these days — that the way out of a recession is to
drastically cut government spending and shrink the deficit.
As sensible as that
sounds, there is little in the historical record to support the theory and most
mainstream economists lean more toward the Keynesian model: increasing
government debt during economic downturns to pump up demand and pulling back
only when things get going again.
If you’re searching
for an example of what budget-cutting does to a faltering economy, you need
look no further than Europe. Bullied into a policy of austerity by the
strongest euro zone member, Germany, the economies of Europe are going, one by
one, into the tank. And the natives are now getting restless. Stimulus, rather than the bitter pill of
austerity, is looking good to them.
And Japan’s economy,
stagnant for the past 20 years, has shown signs of reviving after its new prime
minister decided to adopt some stimulative policies, even though they were
inflationary.
You will never
convince the Coburns and Inhofes of the world of that lesson, however. And
there are a lot of them. Worse, they seem to have convinced a good share of the
American people that we can secure the future of our grandchildren by failing
to educate them or build roads, bridges, hospitals, and airfields for them to
inherit.
There are few things
more powerful than a bad idea whose time has come. Today, that bad idea is
embracing austerity to cure joblessness.
OtherWords columnist
Donald Kaul lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. OtherWords.org