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The Republican party is generally claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Note the term "claimed" here; I do not think the record of Republican governance proves this claim at all well, but nonetheless the default expectation seems persistent. When I was younger, this was certainly a selling-point of the party to me, and I voted for Bush II in the hope that he'd get government spending under control. Then 9/11 happened, and he wasted trillions wandering our military through the middle east.
Now the debt is very bad, and people are once more raising the banner of Fiscal Responsibility. Is it in Republicans' interest to enforce "fiscal responsibility", and if so, how? If we were to seriously cut spending and raise taxes, as people claim the fiscal situation demands, this would almost certainly cost us the next election. In the best possible case that I can see, we would be expending our political power to create stable economic conditions for our opponents to then rule. The more likely case would be us expending our political power to ameliorate spending that our opponents increase to gain power for themselves, resulting in a much shakier economy and our complete political irrelevance.
Why not offer the Fiscal Responsibility mantel to the Democrats? The economy is very complicated after all, and they are at this point clearly the party of Expert Opinion: who better to determine and implement the hard-nosed measures necessary to right our economic vessel? When I was younger, the obvious rejoinder would have been that they would do a bad job of it and disaster would result, but it seems to me that we have not done all that much better, and disaster seems likely in any case. If disaster cannot be meaningfully avoided, then why expend limited resources demanded by a serious political conflict on an unfixable resource-sink of a problem? What's the actual plan, here?
The Republicans haven't been the party of "fiscal responsibility" any more than the Democrats have been the party of the working class in living memory.
Are you just making a somewhat sardonic argument for accelerationism ("we should just loot the treasury since that's what everyone does when they're in power?") or do you actually have a proposition for how we could right the ship in some fashion? I feel like you're really just making another pitch for accepting that America is over, and so, okay, then what?
The actual solution to the debt is what we've discussed many times: entitlements and defense spending, both of which are regarded as more or less untouchable. Every other "budget-cutting measure" (including and especially DOGE) is just theatrics. Since most people agree that neither party will have the stones to cut Social Security or Medicare or really meaningfully slash the military, the actual question seems to be, can we somehow survive this? (Here we hear arguments for AGI saving us, or asteroid mining opening up a new frontier, or Modern Monetary Theory being real, all just variations on "Wish for a miracle.") Or are we debating how much ruin is actually left in the nation and whether we or our children will outlive it?
There is always the option that we face reality and do the hard things, and I think that is still possible - sometimes people do the hard things when they actually have no other choice. But you do make a compelling case that rather than hoping for actual economic reform even if it does mean I personally will see my retirement amount to less than it should have been, I should be selfish and just try to grab what I can and hope I'm dead before the shit really hits the fan. Sucks for the kids, though.
I know. I said as much.
The way you are framing the issue here is illuminating of my point, I think. I did not use the word "looting". Do you personally recognize entitlement spending as "looting" in other contexts? Does the Democratic party generally? I appreciate that many Republicans have considered entitlement spending as "looting", but why should the party as a whole do so now? Why not argue that the Democrats were right, that government spending is good, and make our own case for the best way to do it? Nor would this be pure cynical posturing. The SLS is a national disgrace in terms of achieving the goals the money was earmarked for. In terms of maintaining some sort of "productive" economic activity in a number of geographically-dispersed communities around the country, maybe it's actually the best of a bad set of options? And if not, under what principles, and who are these principles supposed to be championed by? To the extent that "Entitlement spending is looting" is a case that needs to be made, why not openly invite others to make it by legibly abandoning the position oneself? My party actually spearheaded the GWOT, and a lot of the current tumult is us making a serious effort to strip power from those members of our faction responsible. It is not guaranteed that this will actually resolve the problem, but it's something, isn't it?
In any case, whichever angle one chooses to approach the problem from, it seems unlikely to me that the old shibboleths are productive here.
From my perspective, DOGE's value comes from it attacking Progressive patronage networks that turn federal tax dollars into progressive political influence, with secondary purposes of normalizing the idea of disruption of disruptive reorganization of sclerotic federal bureaucracy. It actually balancing the budget appears to be a novel political tactic called "lying". It will be interesting to see how this new technique alters our political landscape now that its usefulness has been demonstrated.
This could actually be a very good time to cut defense spending drastically, provided we can be pretty sure we won't have to fight a war in, say, the next decade. An unknown but likely very large percentage of our current equipment is pretty clearly now obsolete, and the new paradigm has not solidified. Until it does solidify, it seems to me very likely that most military spending will be pure waste. Funding for Ukraine is, perversely, probably the exception, as it can at least be argued that it helps establish the new paradigm. One of the major downsides is that it appears to increase our risk of an actual war.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that, in my view, Defense spending should absolutely be as touchable as entitlement spending, maybe even more so.
Deus Ex Machina or Ruin do appear to be the likely outcomes, with one significantly likelier than the other. But more generally, the question is whether the tactics we've historically relied upon offer any real traction on these probabilities. Republicans have not, in fact, proved themselves capable of "fiscal responsibility" in any meaningful sense, and it seems at least arguable to me that pretending otherwise makes actual fiscal responsibility harder, not easier.
"We", surely. Looting individually is far less efficient; many hands make light work. But more generally, if this is the situation, what benefit is derived from pretending otherwise?
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with that, even though it would be to my personal detriment. But on the one hand, you are talking about things we could do to improve the economy and the country. On the other hand, you argue that we should not bother to do that because you don't want the other party to have a stronger economy to work with when they come into power. So I am a little confused what you actually want if it's not "Assume everyone is in defect mode and loot what we can."
IMO he’s saying that:
In short, play the game of chicken to its end in an attempt to reverse the usual dynamic where Democrats make heartrending pleas and inspiring plans while Republicans explain why lots of things have to be cut and dodge rotten tomatoes.
@FCfromSCC is this a fair summary?
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