This page was last updated on February 2, 2010.
Concrete steps; Editorial; Beaver County Times; January 31, 2010.
This is the third editorial on the deficit topic in 10 days and raises no new points. As a result, please read my critique of “Debt panel” for my comments.
We appear to have another example of the Times changing its position to support the lefty message du jour. The editorial said, “Pay-go requires that new tax cuts or new spending programs not increase deficits. Such a law was in place in the 1990s, and it had a lot to do with keeping deficit spending under control.” This appears to conflict with the Times opinion just under a year ago. In “A small step” (2/25/09), the Times told us “When President Bill Clinton left office, the federal government was running a surplus and actually paying down the national debt. That was not so much the result of fiscal prudence as it was gridlock between the Clinton White House and GOP-controlled Congress and revenue from a healthy economy.” So which was it, Times, “pay-go” or “gridlock … and revenue from a healthy economy?”
As for “it [pay-go] was jettisoned by congressional Republicans once George W. Bush became president,” this is an exact repeat of the same assertion in “Under control.” As I noted in my critique of that editorial, the so-called pay-go law expired in 2002 and was not re-enacted. As far as I can tell, Democrats also made no effort to reinstate pay-go. It’s been three years since Democrats became the majority party in Congress and they are just now getting around to pay-go.
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