The awesome power of really big numbers
The press constantly talks about how much the reconciliation plan currently under consideration in congress might cost. Of course, they know what the limit is, since the reconciliation process requires Congress to set one – it’s $3.5 trillion in spending. This is without consideration of the pay-fors, namely tax increases, savings on prescriptions drugs through national purchasing, etc.
More importantly, they characterize this high-end number as impossibly large. In fact, Meghan McCain on Meet The Press even inflated the number by $1.5 trillion, and Chuck Todd (a.k.a. Fuck Wad) didn’t seem to notice. So there’s no upper limit on exaggeration. But WTF – is $3.5 trillion really that much when you’re talking about a ten-year plan?
Lavish military spending
Look at the Defense Authorization Act the House just passed 316-113. It is $768 billion for one year. If you did the same thing with military spending as we routinely do with domestic spending, we would be talking about an 8 trillion-dollar Pentagon budget over the next ten years. That’s probably a conservative estimate, given the fact that the DOD budget increases by something like 7 to 10 percent every year.
So the obvious question for all those budget-conscious legislators questioning the price tag of the reconciliation package is this: why don’t you complain about the much more massive spending on the Pentagon? The answer is obvious. It’s the same thing Eisenhower warned us of back in 1961, as he was preparing to leave office. The military-industrial complex is alive and well.
Various flavors of Keynesianism.
Fiscal stimulus has a long track record in capitalism. Championed by British economist John Maynard Keynes back in the 1930s, the standard story goes that it fell out of favor during the Reagan era. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Reagan spent enormous amounts of money on the U.S. military. It comported with his bellicose rhetoric and policies regarding Cold War international conflicts, but there was more to it than that. Reagan’s unprecedentedly high peacetime military budgets sluiced money into high tech industries. That money made its way into virtually every congressional district in the country.
In short, it was a massive public spending program funded by debt. That model has held steady since those heady days of the 1980s, through Republican and Democratic administrations alike. Biden is no exception. During the 2020 primary campaign, I pointed out the lack of information on his web site about foreign policy. I think that was largely because there would be very little difference.
In any case, the next time someone tells you the reconciliation package is too big, remind them of our OTHER massive spending bills – the ones that blow money on tanks, planes, bombs, etc.
luv u,
jp
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