This week, Rachel Maddow did an excellent segment on presidents and the debt:
There's just two problems--not for Rachel, but for the entire Democratic establishment, and frankly the entire supposedly fact-checked and "objective" media: (A) What took so long? and (B) Where's the endless repetition?
As you can see from the following chart (same underlying figures the second chart in last weekend's diary, "Everything Versailles says about the debt is wrong") Republican's haven't engaged in responsible budgeting since Ronald Reagan rolled into town 30 years ago:
It's not just that Republicans are "fiscally irresponsible." It's that they're constantly using Keyensian-style deficit spending to drive the economy, all the while claiming that what's driving the economy is the "free market forces" they've "unleashed." Of course, Keynes never said that government should run deficits all the time. They were supposed to run countercyclically--when non-governmental demand plummeted, the way it has since mid-2008. Running deficits all the time--not little ones--has a really bad effect on the economy, because it more than "unleashes" those magical "free market forces", it gets them turbo-charged, intoxicated and headed right off the nearest cliff.
I don't care how smart you are. You can't make good policy against a background chorus of constant lies.