Here's Makin speaking much of the anti-Keynesian party line back in 2010.

Seriously, I think hell just froze over. An American Enterprise Institute "stink tanker" publicly contradicts the party line and tells conservatives the debt is no big deal -- based on actual facts n' stuff? The AEI, home to Lynne Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Newt Gingrich and John Bolton?

There's always the possibility this is merely a public relations move in reaction to the sound drubbing conservatives took in the November election, but even if it is, so what? A chink in the armor is going to make our job of stopping austerity measures a lot easier:

You know the deficit argument is all but over when one conservative tells other conservatives to shut up about it, already.

American Enterprise Institute's John H. Makin has a long new argument today, in which he said that worrying about national debt is a nonsensical idea because Japan's national debt isn't hurting them any, and really, the U.S. has other stuff to worry about. Like fixing the tax code, or reforming entitlement programs.

The debt-to-GDP ratio, which is what many conservatives tout as a metric of how "unsustainable" U.S. debt is, means absolutely nothing, he said. Japan, for instance, has a debt-to-GDP ration of 140, which is way above the U.S. number, and it really hasn't had any effect whatsoever on their economy. In fact, the interest rate for 10-year Japanese bonds are half that of the American equivalent, in part because of Japanese deflation.

From his notes:

Congress, take note. Although American deficits do need to be reduced and debt accumulation does need to be slowed and eventually reversed, cries of imminent disaster from “unsustainable” deficits and a supposed bond market collapse will not accomplish this goal. Persistently rising bond prices in Japan and the United States have undercut the “sky-is-falling” rationale for deficit reduction.

In fact, austerity could just about be the silliest thing to do, if Congress wants the debt-to-GDP ratio to fall:

If fiscal austerity is applied too rapidly, US growth will drop and the debt-to-GDP ratio will rise, boosting the nation’s debt burden. If the Fed tries to stem the rise with too much money printing, inflation could rise and drive up interest rates, exacerbating the US debt burden.Congress and the president need to avoid excessive austerity with respect to changes in fiscal policy this year. Over the past four years, on average, the fiscal boost applied to the American economy has been worth about 3 percent of GDP. This year, with tax increases and sequestration, fiscal drag will be about 1.5 percent of GDP.

According to Makin, instead of yelling about how the world is going end and whatnot, which would only serve to sap the momentum to sound fiscal policy, Congress should be cutting deficits gradually, through tax reform and by rethinking how entitlement programs work.

When an AEI scholar and Paul Krugman are telling you the same thing, these are strange days indeed!

It can't be repeated enough: Republicans really don't care about debt or deficits. Case in point, Mittens gave a big speech on Tuesday in Iowa attacking the President over the national debt -- and yet, he wants to make it $2.6T larger in 10 years. And on Wednesday's Morning Joe, Scarborough put this very simple, direct question to Paul Ryan:

SCARBOROUGH: You're talking about how Mitt Romney's going to be responsible. You look at Mitt Romney's plans, though -- you add them all up -- the deficit goes up just as much as it does under Barack Obama. You know, if you look at their plans, there's not a big difference. [...] At the end of the day, Paul, how much is the national debt going to be reduced under Mitt Romney's tax plans and spending plans?

Ryan's response? He huffily protests that Romney's plan is very different from Obama's because it cuts "entitlements." But did you hear him ever say how much the deficit will actually come down under Mitt Romney? Me neither.

Also, Scarborough is wrong -- Romney would actually increase the deficit much more than Obama.

So why is Ryan praising Romney's plans? Because they reflect Republican values: cutting taxes even lower for rich people, while slashing services for the elderly and poor.

But this has absolutely nothing to do with debt and deficits, and Republicans should be called out on this little con game they've been playing every time.

First, let's be clear. Republicans don't give a rat's behind about deficits or the national debt. Their hero Ronald Reagan tripled it, George W. Bush doubled it -- and Dick Cheney famously said that deficits don't matter. That Paul Ryan proposal Republicans love so much? Yep, it makes the debt worse.

All of that background makes this rather amusing indeed.

National Republicans, paired with Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, will focus their attention this week on President Barack Obama's handing of the national debt, the groups announced Monday.

The effort will include a "major policy speech" from Romney, according to Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who was part of a conference call announcing the effort Monday morning.

"Governor Romney will be in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon at Drake University to give a major policy speech and it'll be based on the out-of-control spending and debt," King said on the call.

First, there is no "out of control spending" -- that's a lie. Total government spending under Obama has decreased. The debt is where it is because taxes are at historic lows and revenues are even more depressed by the fact that we're still emerging from the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

Second, if Willard is so worried about the debt, why does he want add trillions to it?

Romney proposed to cut federal income tax rates by 20 percent more for all earners, which would slash U.S. revenue by more than $2 trillion over 10 years.

Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard said the lost cash would be recovered by closing tax loopholes and boosting economic activity. But until the campaign offers a more specific plan, Budget Watch analysts said Romney’s entire framework would add about $2.6 trillion to the debt by 2021.

Proving, yet again, that Republicans don't care about debt and deficits.

You wish, just once, that a reporter would ask, "Governor, if the debt is such a problem, why do your tax proposals add trillions of dollars to it?" But that's probably asking too much.

Mark Knoller is the White House correspondant for CBS Radio, and a first-class right-wing tool. Monday night, he posted an article titled, "National debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush," which sent wingnuts scurrying to their Twitter accounts. The problem is, the piece is BS. Here's Knoller's key graf:

The Debt rose $4.899 trillion during the two terms of the Bush presidency. It has now gone up $4.939 trillion since President Obama took office.

Don't you just love the way he capitalizes "debt"?

What Knoller doesn't specify, naturally, is what the debt was when Bush began his presidency. And that's a glaring omission, because unless you don't know that, you can't accurately compare the records. So here it is.

In 2001, the national debt Bush inherited was around $5.7T, give or take. Some of that debt in 2001 has to be attributed to Clinton, just as some of the debt in 2009 when Obama took office has to be attributed to Bush. When W. left office in 2009, the debt was nearly $11T. That's an increase of 89 percent.

Under Obama, the debt has increased from about $11T to about $15T, about 40 percent.

And what's behind that increase? Historically low taxes and historically low revenues -- and the worst financial crash since the 1930s. There's been no "binge" in spending, as Knoller wants you to believe.

And PS, this isn't the first "look how Obama's bankrupting the country" hit job this guy has written.

This clown should leave CBS and go to Fox News. He'd fit right in.

Let's just get this out of the way up front: The administration acknowledges that President Obama's promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term will not happen. So yes, it's a broken promise. Blame Wall Street for that.

Via Washington Post:

In a written message to Congress, Obama issued a passionate election-year call for increased spending to bolster domestic manufacturing, lure jobs back from overseas, hire teachers, retrain workers and rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. He drew a sharp contrast with his Republican opponents, arguing that his approach “rejects the ‘you’re on your own’ economics” that envision tax cuts for the rich and a frayed social safety net for everyone else, and “have led to a widening gap between the richest and poorest Americans.”

The President's budget proposal calls for big investments in infrastructure, education, and jobs programs with cuts to discretionary spending. It is, however, a two-pronged approach. His call for passage of the Buffett rule, taxation of dividends at ordinary income rates, and other tax increases for the wealthy are part of a separate tax reform initiative unrelated to the budget outlined by the White House.

Ezra Klein has more wonky details, comparing Obama's budget to Mitt Romney's proposals:

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This sneering, preening performance by the new Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, yesterday on Fox News really set me off, for some reason. As you can see, it's all about blaming Democrats for the state of the economy, insisting that they are somehow responsible for the ballooning federal deficit and the need to raise the debt ceiling. That's the thrust of the RNC's latest round of Obama-bashing ads.

You certainly can't say they lack for chutzpah.

Look, this meme has been building ever since the Tea Partiers started raging about the deficit and the debt, and now it's the official Republican talking point. It all makes me want to ask:

Where do you guys get the balls to lecture Democrats about deficit spending and the state of the economy?

Seriously.

The previous Democratic president -- a guy named Bill Clinton, who Republicans hounded with a meaningless sex scandal -- handed off to his Republican successor a $46 billion federal surplus after having erased the deficit for three successive years.

That surplus disappeared the first year George W. Bush was in office, even before the 9/11 attacks happened, in no small part because Bush began slashing taxes for the wealthy immediately upon taking office. And then he and his Republican allies running the Congress proceeded to ring up the deficit to unheard-of heights, thanks largely to a needless invasion of another nation under false pretenses.

Where were all these Republicans in the years 2001-2006, when they were setting new records for federal deficits and destroying the economy along the way?

And then blaming Obama and the Democrats for lost jobs really takes the cake. It's undoubtedly true that Obama's policies have not restored jobs in anything near an adequate fashion. But those millions of jobs were destroyed on Republicans' economic watch, as a result of Republican economic policies.

Fixing the economy is indeed a much bigger uphill climb than the Pollyannas on the White House economic team reckoned. But Republicans have done nothing but make it harder, by obstructing every Democratic initiative to stimulate the economy and improve our economic competitiveness (which was what the health-care debate was largely about), not to mention the employment picture generally.

Indeed, it's now becoming crystal clear that they are perfectly willing to wreck the American economy entirely in order to defeat Obama's economic policies, such as they are. And at the same time, they not only plan to blame Obama for the wreckage, they are already doing so.

Remind me again why our president is deluded into believing he can bargain in good faith with these people.

OK, rant over.

We've remarked from the get-go that the most remarkable thing about the Tea Partying Republican Right is that they represent a political bloc predicated on people believing things that are provably untrue. This has, of course, ranged from the Birth Certificate nonsense to the belief that Obama is going to take everyone's guns away, and everything in between.

But these are in many ways secondary add-ons to Tea Partyism, whose core mantra really revolves around the federal deficit and spending: We're on the verge of bankruptcy, they claim, and it's being caused by "out-of-control" federal spending.

In the video above, Van Jones -- who knows all about right-wing lies -- deconstructs the Really Big Lie that is a cornerstone of Tea Party beliefs, not to mention right-wing media talking points, namely: We're going broke.

We're not.

Meanwhile, Brian Beutler at TPMDC deconstructs the claim that "federal spending is out of control":

But a close look at the numbers reveals a few important, and frequently overlooked facts. Domestic discretionary spending is a small sliver of the budget. Our deficit and debts can be traced to the fact that spending on entitlement programs and defense has shot up, and tax revenues have plummeted to their lowest level in decades. But spending on domestic discretionary programs has grown much more slowly. And, if you correct for inflation, and for growing population, it turns out we're spending exactly the same amount on these programs as we were a full decade ago.

These numbers come from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are doing their best to guard this turf.

"Although non-defense discretionary spending in nominal dollars has increased, when taking inflation and population growth into account the amount contained in the [2011 budget] represents no increase over what we spent in 2001, a year in which we generated a surplus of $128 billion," said chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HI) in a prepared statement. "So the right question to ask is: Are we really spending too much on non-defense programs? The answer is clearly no."

Beutler provides some graphic illustrations of the reality behind the numbers that make it clear, as he suggests, just who the chief culprit in this matter really is: right-wing governance and its mania for cutting taxes.

In the wake of the Bush tax cuts, and the Great Recession, tax revenue has fallen through the floor to near-historic lows. As a percentage of GDP, it's fallen 24 percent since 2001, and if you correct for inflation, the government is collecting nearly 20 percent less per person than it was a decade ago. At the same time, the population-adjusted costs of mandatory spending programs -- driven by Medicare, including its new prescription drug benefit, and Medicaid -- have increased by over 30 percent. And, of course, defense spending has skyrocketed. But if you isolate domestic discretionary programs, a decade later we're spending no more on a per-person basis than we were back then.

Meanwhile, Robert Reich explains all this in detail:

Yes, it's true: Right-wing ideology is increasingly built on a foundation of lies.

President Obama Addresses the Nation on the Debt Ceiling **
** This mythical address, of course, never occurred. But something like it should have happened a long time ago.

(As Prepared But Never Delivered, July 1, 2011.)

My fellow Americans,

I want to speak to you today about a matter of the greatest national urgency. We face a crisis unique in our history. This threat comes not from a foreign foe or bloodthirsty terrorists, but is no less dangerous and insidious. No, this challenge to the American way of life comes entirely from within. And the damage it could cause is as catastrophic as it is unnecessary.

I am speaking about the looming deadline to raise the debt ceiling of the United States.

On or about August 2nd, the government of the United States will hit the $14.3 trillion limit on its debt. Never in our 235 year history has the United States of America defaulted on its financial obligations. Never has Congress failed to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner. Never has Congress put the full faith and credit of the United States in jeopardy.

Until now.

In an act of reckless and unprecedented partisanship, Republican leaders in both houses of Congress have promised to block the needed increase in the debt ceiling unless an ever-shifting - and escalating - series of demands are met. At a time when this nation is fighting two wars and slowly emerging from its deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, only now are Republicans demanding trillions in spending cuts which would slow our recovery, cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and undermine our social safety net. Republicans insist that any new revenue from any source, even by closing tax loopholes for the wealthiest individuals and most profitable corporation in America, is "off the table."

If those demands are unmet, the same Republican Party which drove this economy into a ditch will drive it off a cliff. That is irresponsible and unacceptable. Congress should pass the $2 trillion increase in the debt limit right now and with no preconditions.

You don't have to take my word for it or even Treasury Secretary Geithner's warning that that default by the U.S. "would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American." Back in January, Speaker Boehner himself explained, and I quote:

"That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, 'we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the federal debt."

Economists, business leaders, think tanks and international financial bodies are in agreement regarding the dire consequences which would ensue. Mark Zandi, an economic adviser in 2008 to John McCain warned this week that failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd would mean "I think we go into recession and my forecast would be blown out of the water." Bruce Josten of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agreed that failure to pass legislation authorizing an increase in borrowing by Aug. 4 "would create uncertainty and fear, and threaten the credit rating of the United States." This week, 235 economists - including six Nobel Prize winners - signed an open letter to Congressional leaders urging them to raise the ceiling, and to do so "without attaching drastic and potentially dangerous reductions in federal spending." And the Standard & Poor's rating agency joined Moody's in warning that "the United States would immediately have its top-notch credit rating slashed to 'selective default' if it misses a debt payment on August 4."

Again, you don't have to take my word for it. Instead, listen to President Ronald Reagan from 1983:

This country now possesses the strongest credit in the world. The full consequences of a default -- or even the serious prospect of default -- by the United States are impossible and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and on the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.

Ronald Reagan knew what he was talking about. After all, the national debt of the United States tripled during his tenure in the White House. And it would have been even worse had Reagan not raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As Alan Simpson, the co-chairman of my Commission on Fiscal Responsibility put it, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was here."

Now, some, like Speaker Boehner, have said that the early August deadline to increase the debt ceiling is "artificial." There are Republican members of both houses and GOP presidential candidates who have accused Treasury Secretary Geithner and this administration of "doomsday predictions that could only materialize at his own hand," of "scare tactics", and of "outright blatant lies." To those who claim that the debt limit need not be lifted and that the U.S simply "prioritize" interest payments on the debt, Secretary Geithner has been clear that "such uncertainty could cause the markets to doubt the full faith and credit of the United States." And the Republican opposition, or at least most of them, knows this to be true. To pretend otherwise, as Senator Jon Kyl is fond of saying, is "not intended to be a factual statement."

That is as unforgiveable as it is cynical.

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George W. Bush was the first modern president to cut taxes during wartime. Now, the unpaid $2 trillion bill for the wars he fought - and chose to fight - is long overdue. While President Obama and the Republican leadership in Congress jockey to position their budget cutting plans, it's time for both parties - and all Americans - to pay the price we claim liberty demands. Here, then, is the Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013.

2013, that is, because now isn't the time to raise income and other taxes. (Nor, for that matter, to reign in critical infrastructure spending and needed relief for the states.) While clearly gaining steam, the recovery from the Bush recession is still in its early stages. And, lamentably, President Obama and Congress just weeks ago inked a compromise two-year extension to the Bush tax cuts which will add another $800 billion in red ink to the U.S. national debt, much of it in new windfalls for the wealthiest Americans needing them least.

While there are countless scenarios for a war tax designed to pay off the costs of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, here are some suggested guidelines Bipartisan War Tax Act of 2013:

• Everyone pays. From the moment President Bush told us to go shopping and to "get down to Disney World" in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Americans haven't been asked to fight, pay for or otherwise sacrifice to defeat Al Qaeda. As FDR put it two days after Pearl Harbor, "We are now in this war. We are all in it-all the way. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history." That must as true of our wars (and deficits) now as it was then.

• The rich pay more. This proud American tradition was met by the well-to-do of the Greatest Generation, who paid a top income tax rate of 94%. (Those stratospheric rates stayed in place until 1963, and remained as high as 77% throughout the sixties.)

• The war taxes are temporary. Just as the Bush tax cuts theoretically were supposed to sunset after a decade, so it should be for the War Tax Act. (Future deficit hawks can argue about their extension.)

• They must raise at least $3 trillion over ten years.

That price tag needs some elaboration. In September 2010, the Congressional Research Service put the total cost of the wars at $1.12 trillion, including $751 billion for Iraq and $336 billion for Afghanistan. For the 2012 fiscal year which begins on October 1, President Obama will ask for $117 billion more. (That war-fighting funding is over and above Secretary Gates' $553 billion Pentagon budget request for next year.) But in addition to the roughly $1.5 trillion tally for both conflicts through the theoretical 2014 American draw down date in Afghanistan, the U.S. faces staggering bills for veterans' health care and disability benefits. Last May, an analysis by the Center for American Progress estimated the total projected total cost of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' health care and disability could reach between $422 billion to $717 billion. Reconstruction aid and other development assistance represent tens of billions more, as does the additional interest on the national debt. And none of the above counts the expanded funding for the new Department of Homeland Security.

But that two-plus trillion dollar tab doesn't account for the expansion of the United States military since the start of the "global war on terror." While ThinkProgress explained that the Pentagon's FY 2012 ask is "the largest request ever since World War II," McClatchy explained:

Such a boost would mark the 14th year in a row that Pentagon spending has increased, despite the waning U.S. presence in Iraq. In dollars, Pentagon spending has more than doubled in 10 years. Even adjusted for inflation, the Defense Department budget has risen 65% in the past decade.

Even with the proposed $78 billion in cuts and troop reductions advocated by Gates and Obama over the next five years, "the bottom-line figure would still go up during that time, with projected spending totaling $643 billion in 2015 and $735 billion in 2020."

Even with the reduction in staffing forecast for 2015, the Army and Marine Corps would be larger than they were when the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began.

Despite the grumbling of some Tea Party members, Congressional Republicans have made clear they want no cuts to defense as part of their $100 billion reduction in discretionary spending.

Which raises the question: why would perpetually tax-cutting Republicans agree to tax increases to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Because the Republicans believe the global terrorism poses as an existential threat to the United States. And we know this, because they repeatedly told us so.

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This weekend, Republicans marked the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan with speeches celebrating his small government philosophy, anti-tax fervor and hard-line foreign policy. But if Reagan was a GOP candidate today, he would doubtless fall victim to violations of his own 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican." Because despite all of the right-wing hagiography, Ronald Reagan ballooned the national debt, repeatedly raised taxes, signed abortion rights legislation and negotiated with terrorists in Iran. For those and so many other perceived offenses, the GOP rank and file - and especially its purity-demanding Tea Partiers - would today brand a reanimated Ronald Reagan a Republican in Name Only.

Meet RINO Reagan:

1. Reagan tripled the national debt
2. Reagan raised taxes 11 times
3. Reagan expanded the size of government
4. Reagan supported the "socialist" Earned Income Tax Credit
5. Reagan negotiated with terrorists in Tehran
6. Reagan sought to eliminate nuclear weapons
7. Reagan gave amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants
8. Reagan approved protectionist trade barriers
9. Reagan signed abortion rights law in California
10. Reagan eventually debunked AIDS myths Republicans continued to perpetuate

1. Reagan Tripled the National Debt. As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Even his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous "rosy scenarios."

Forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder Stockman lamented last year:

"[The] debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party's embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."

Sarah Palin's revisionist history Friday notwithstanding, it was Reagan who put the United States on "the road to ruin."

2. Reagan Raised Taxes 11 Times
As ThinkProgress noted, the inedible image of Ronald Reagan the tax cutter is "false mythology." (It is also worth noting that it was President Obama and not Reagan who delivered the largest two year tax cut in American history.) While Governor Reagan doubled California's state spending and signed the biggest tax hike up to that point, as President he raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan "a dear friend," told NPR, "Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration -- I was there."

3. Reagan Expanded the Size of Government
On Friday, Sarah Palin told the Reaganauts assembled by the Young Americans for Freedom, "We need to stop spending and cut government back down to size." If that's the case, her role model should be Democrat Bill Clinton and not Republican Ronald Reagan.

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