“Put Off Badly Needed Budget Cuts? Austerity Doesn’t Mean No Growth” – Reynolds
The Times’ real point was to argue that, “Whatever the sum .. . cutting billions would be foolish at a time when joblessness is high and the recovery needs stimulus, not tightening. … Spending cuts need not and should not start today, but the nation needs to put a credible plan in place now to reduce the deficit as the economy recovers.”
The trouble is that procrastination is never a credible plan. If Congress avoids doing even a little budget pruning right now, why expect it to do much more later? Promises to do something unpopular in the future could easily be undone by a future Congress, just as Congress repeatedly undoes the supposedly credible “doctor fix” (an absurd pledge to slash Medicare payments to physicians).” Read more.
“Put Off Badly Needed Budget Cuts? Austerity Doesn’t Mean No Growth”
Alan Reynolds
Via the Cato Institute, January 14, 2011.
Image by Giovanni Sades / FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
