Deficits Good and Bad

Robert Reich, Clinton's secretary of labor and a very smart guy, has published a new op-ed piece on that sexiest of all political topics, deficits. It's wonky, but Reich clearly lays out the few benefits and heavy costs of the Bush II budget deficit (a record $422 billion!), describes how it was created (war spending + tax cuts), and predicts that, unless things are radically changed, an economic crisis will swamp us all.

Of course, the GOP has a solution to that imminent crisis: slashing government spending on everything but the military and a few entitlements. Reich proposes an alternative: "public investments in education, job training, infrastructure, and basic research and development [which] would more than pay for themselves as they spurred growth of the nation’s productive capacity. Indeed, deficits induced by these sorts of investments shouldn’t be worrisome" because these expenditures would create real gains later: a more capable workforce, a smarter citizenry, better cities, and so forth.

All that's fine as far as it goes, and I would love to see even a fraction of it enacted, but Reich hardly seems to recognize the quaint FDR-esqueness of his argument. The GOP has pushed public debate so far to the right that even having an authentic debate over such spending is practically impossible - to everyone's detriment.