The Constant Carping of the Conservatives (Part 1)

The Persistent Republican Mistake


Conservative American Economic Theory Tells Us that government spending never achieves anything good for us. That big-government efforts always fail. And what’s worse, that big programs always prolong the economic downturns that they are meant to resolve.

The Loudest Example of This Theory is the alleged failure of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” efforts during the Great Depression.

Conservatives Consistently Repeat the Mistaken Notion that the New Deal Failed. And then next, they repeat that “the Great Depression didn’t end until World War II.”

Wisconsin Republican Representative Paul Ryan said that very thing this morning, on NPR’s Morning Edition: “We borrowed so much money [under the New Deal]; we ran up the debt. We didn't get out of the Depression until World War II came along.”

Read the NPR Story Yourself:
GOP’s Ryan: ‘Budget Exploits The Economic Crisis’

The Great Republican Riddle:

If Big Spending Didn't Improve Things in the Great Depression,
How Did It Do the Job with the Second World War?

Such Flawed, Conservative Thinking led America into the current mess. And so long as Conservatives put out this screwy combination of premises, the quality of their logic remains suspect.


NEXT: “When Is a Budget Not a Budget?”

Doesn't Anyone Else Remember Republican Budget Blow-outs?

Throughout the Last Century of America’s History, it has been the Republicans who create massive debt and Depression, and it is the Democrats who bail America out.

Republicans Still Debate the Effects of FDR’s “New Deal,” despite the job growth that was created once Franklin Roosevelt took office. The unemployment rate in the four years from 1933 to 1937 shrunk by about 40%—forty-percent job creation by the New Deal!

But the Republicans Still Want to Wait and See about this stimulus package, because it might not get us out of the Bush Depression in the first 100 days of the Obama administration. After all, it's not Republican mortgages being foreclosed. It's not Republicans who are being laid off.

Republicans Still Revere Ronald Reagan as a Conservative, ignoring the huge excesses in spending during his years.

It Took a Democratic Administration, under President Bill Clinton, to retire the biggest debt that America had ever had and to provide America with a budget surplus. The same budget surplus squandered under George W. Bush.

“Bi-Partisan” Means Both Sides Have to Chip In

Bi-Partisan Is What We, the American People, Want Now. But the members of the Republican Party remain blinded by the foolishness of their failed ideology. Giving Republicans the most-generous consideration (that they are blinded by ideology, rather than that they just might not care how much the “real Americans” of real individual responsibility, suffer), it's a pretty sad fixation on failed ideals.

What's the Difference Between
Consuming and Investing, Anyhow?

The Biggest Flaw in Republican Reasoning right now—besides their blindness to history and the historical effects of job-growth on the welfare of the American people—is that they can’t tell the difference between “spending” and “investing.” By far, most of what the stimulus package offers is investment in things that will last.

Capital Investment Means Borrowing the Infrastructure Projects of Tomorrow, for the working people today. For decades to come, we will have the infrastructure—without additional cost. And meanwhile, those of us who truly live by “individual responsibility” pay our mortgages and put food on the table.

If You Can’t Understand That, then you really shouldn’t be running the nation’s economy. If your idea of an “investment” is a luxury Lexus or BMW, you haven’t a clue why the American economy suffers so greatly under the Republicans Party.

Can America Really Afford Republicans Right Now?

All Those Republicans Stonewalling the American People: you can be sure that they're not missing their Congressional paychecks. Not what you would call a bonus exactly. But then, the Republicans in Congress have their nationalized health care, too.

Are We Really Paying the Republicans Now in Congress to fiddle while America suffers from past Republican excesses?

A Lesson in Conservative Economics

Few in America would have imagined a time when Democrats and other Liberals would teach Republicans and other Conservatives the economic realities of capitalism. But on this topic, something said by MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, today caught our ear once again.

Said Mr. Scarborough, “If we're going to invest in new technology, that's one thing. But roads and bridges: that's last century.”

The Allusion Here Apparently referred to various economic-stimulus programs enacted under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in the form of job-creating, infrastructure-producing programs such as the WPA and the CCC, back in the days of the Great Depression.

Some Might Find It Ironic that Conservative Republicans would so-readily reject this particular time-proven method of the last century. But with Mr. Scarborough now on record as dismissing the viability of this remedial option, an extremely brief analysis of those New Deal programs—the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)—may be in order.

Especially Now That We Seem to Be Wading through such another Republican-led, “last century”-type of swamp.

Here Is a View on the CCC Contrary to Mr. Scarborough’s “roads and bridges” argument, taken from a history of America’s national parks:

“While the CCC is no longer around, we have all felt its impact. We have driven past its camps, its fire lookouts, its bridges. The sweat and toil of more than 3,000,000 young men is now embodied in CCC-built facilities stretching from Maine to California. The federal government spent more than $3 billion on the CCC, and its investment is still bearing fruit every time people visit parks such as Great Smoky, Yellowstone, Mount Rainer, or hike the Appalachian Trail.”

(from “The Spirit of the Civilian Conservation Corps,” which may be found at: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2008/09/park-history-spirit-civilian-cnservation-corps)

The Legacy of These Parks and Buildings testifies to the frugal American sensibility. Anyone driving across our beautiful nation witnesses the combination of durability and attractiveness displayed in countless WPA projects and CCC structures—built through the “New Deal” as part of FDR’s cure for the Great Depression. They represent a substantial portion of the physical national infrastructure that serves us still, more than seven decades later.

How Would One Calculate the combined value of the residual American infrastructure? It’s certainly beyond our economics ability.

One Thing the Recent Past Has Taught Us, though, is that when the world places bets—on top of bets—on top of bets—on top of bets—to the extent that those bets overwhelm the value of the underlying pieces of paper (such as the net worth of Iceland)—it’s a good time to have something around that is more-substantial than “investment-grade” paper. Something like roads and bridges.

Each Road and Bridge and School Gym and National-Park Structure built during those difficult times has freed up investment capital. This freed capital has contributed to the tremendous great economic growth that we have enjoyed for the last sixty-five years.

When a Nation Thinks Only of Today, whether in terms of financial infrastructure or in terms of Islamist terrorists, the shortsighted results lead to economic disaster.

“Go out and Shop,” Said Small-Government President George W. Bush.

“Invest for the Future,” Is What Tax-and-Spend President FDR Said.

History Seems to Judge the differences for us—right now. And who would have imagined it, during these interesting times?