03022012blog

Fiscal results projected for current five men running for president; lower bar is better. NYTimes

The Debt We All Owe to Republicans

I ran across an incredible fact recently: 86 percent of our national debt was racked up by three Republican presidents (Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and G.W. Bush), and they did it in just 20 years. It took more than 200 years for all of our other presidents to accrue the other 14 percent.

If the U.S. electorate understands nothing else, this single fact should inform all Democratic discussions and decisions leading up to the presidential election. The reasons why this Conservative causal effect on our national debt should resonate like no other this year is crystal clear: Republicans will argue ad nauseum that, 1. the blame for what ails our economy - our national debt and unemployment picture - lies with liberal Democrats, and 2. they alone can turn the economy around by restoring the Reagan/Bush agenda.

If history teaches us anything, plenty of voters will buy their sales pitch despite the abject failure of the modern Republican Party's trickle-down economics to address America's jobs and long-term deficit picture.

The primary job for Democratic campaign strategists this year must be to commit a laser-like focus on two fronts: 1. teaching and reminding voters about the Republican history of economic failure that caused the budget deficits, and 2. annihilating the Republican nominee’s proposals, with particular emphasis on their tax policies, purporting to rescue the economy.

In this election, the subject of taxes is key, because we have seen how Reagan’s and the Bushes’ election-time promises of lowering federal taxes have impacted all three electoral results (negatively for the second term of the senior Bush), while guaranteeing job losses and the exploding federal deficit under their 20 years of governance which favored the wealthy and corporate plutocracy at the expense of the rest of us. In that regard, Democrats need a forceful, factual campaign to convince independent voters that their financial self-interest is best served by an Obama-proposed tax rate structure similar to Bill Clinton's, which led to the last budget surpluses and job growth before in the modern presidency.

I would love to see Mr. Clinton enrolled in an election-season-long speaking tour to accomplish this voter-education goal. And he should be joined by all current Congressional Democrats in an all-out, grass-roots voter reeducation effort that zeroes in on the sordid modern Republican economic record reflected in that 20-year record cited above. For it is that Reagan/Bush fiscal miasma that has pushed this country into the Great Recession and threatens further damage if the deceptive low-tax pandering of the radical right is left unchallenged.

For its lesson plan, the Democratic Party need look no further than the teachings of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who writes today that all four Republican presidential aspirants propose draconian measures to cut federal programs beneficial to the majority of Americans while…

“squandering all the money thereby saved - and much, much more - on tax cuts for the rich.” 

Krugman goes on to conclude,

“It has been obvious all along, to anyone paying attention, that the politicians shouting loudest about deficits are actually using deficit hysteria as a cover story for their real agenda, which is top-down class warfare.”

For too long, too many voters, I am afraid, were not paying attention, and we all have paid a very dear price for that inattention. Thus my call for a concerted campaign focus on the recent history of Republican fiscal malfeasance and it's devastating consequences. After all, as Sir Winston Churchill said, 

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”