Monday, May 21, 2012

Austerity Hysteria, Again

It's gotten to the point now that austerity can never fail, it can only be failed.

House Budget Commitee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) says that his plan to slash government spending on programs for the poor while increasing defense spending and giving tax cuts to the wealthy would actually “prevent austerity.”

NBC’s David Gregory on Sunday pointed out that the debate over whether slashing budgets would grow the economy was not just happening in Europe, but in the U.S. as well.

This question of austerity in Europe, they had failing economies, nearly depressed economies,” Gregory told Ryan. “The answer throughout the region was to slash their budgets. Has it failed?

No, David,” Ryan replied. “I would say they’ve also raised taxes. This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians who make a lot of empty promises end up running out of the ability to borrow money at cheap rates and now they are broken promises. It’s a cautionary tale of what will happen to us if we stay on the path we are on.”

What we’re saying is let’s get on growth and prevent austerity,” he continued. “The whole premise of our budget is to preempt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth and preventing Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That preempts austerity.”

See, austerity isn't massive cuts in government spending, austerity is the end of government spending.  Massive cuts that will hurt hundreds of millions of Americans so that people like Paul Ryan can get tax cuts is "necessary sacrifice", not "austerity".

It is the duty of the serf to sacrifice for their lords.  That's what America was founded on, after all.

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