Deficit Hawks?
August 14, 2007

       Where government spending is concerned, both Congressman Gilchrest and State Senator Harris appear to be in the neoconservative camp. Neoconservatives are no deficit hawks and must bear heavy responsibility for the dangerous situation the economy is in today.

       Since 1995, the federal government debt has nearly doubled, rising from $5 Trillion, to $8.9 Trillion. I am very unhappy to say that, in the US House, the GOP as a whole, which the neoconservatives have dominated, must take a great deal of the blame for the exploding debt. Gilchrest shares in this blame. Gilchrest and all or nearly all of his neoconservative colleagues voted on every occasion from 1995 to 2006 to raise the public debt limit. Lo and behold, the government has a habit of borrowing money right up to the sanctioned limit. 

       In recent weeks, Gilchrest has dabbled in the role of deficit hawk. “At a time when our national debt continues to spiral out of control, this seemed like a reasonable cut to help reign in federal spending.” With these words, Gilchrest justified a vote he cast in late July that would have cut $522 million from a transportation, housing and urban development bill, and $268 million from a different bill. It is unfortunate the measures to cut the sum of $790 million failed. Even if the measures had prevailed, what is $790 million saved, compared to the $4 Trillion of debt—an amount five thousand times larger!—for which Gilchrest had voted over the long period from 1995 to 2006? Expressed another way, the votes Gilchrest has cast to raise the debt since 1995 amounts to each adult in the country owing about $28,000 and interest, but several weeks ago he cast two votes that would have reduced this amount by $5.50.

       Harris, for his part, would have us believe that he would be a true deficit hawk, if he were to represent us in Congress. Yet he is silent about the votes Gilchrest and the neoconservatives cast from 1995 to 2006 to raise the debt. It is incredible that Harris says not a word about the imposition of approximately $28,000 and interest on every American man and woman. Instead we encounter Harris quibbling with Gilchrest's record in 2007. Through several press releases issued in July, Harris leaves one with the impression that Gilchrest did not lose his way until this very year, that Gilchrest did not leave behind fiscal responsibility for wasteful spending until 2007. (Harris cities a Congressional Quarterly study of Congressional votes, whereby Gilchrest voted in step with the GOP 52% of the time this year, down from 75% in 2006.) I should think Gilchrest lost his way not in 2007 but a long time ago! How can anyone use as a good benchmark or yardstick of responsibility the neoconservative debt-explosion voting record through 2006?  

       How can we expect Harris or anyone else for that matter to stand firm as a deficit hawk if they will not criticize profligacy as clear as day? Is Harris too much of a “party man” to rebuke Gilchrest and his neoconservative colleagues for the bad votes cast from 1995 to 2006? 

       In the meantime, the economy heads toward the rocks. There was the credit crunch of early August. Even worse, confidence in the US dollar has never been this low around the world. The US Dollar Index which measures the value of the dollar relative to the value of other major currencies, such as the euro, yen and pound, has reached a very, very dangerous low in the last few weeks. The odds have never been higher that foreigners will unload large amounts of dollar holdings, and diversify heavily in non-US currencies, which, in turn, would be very painful, if not devastating, for our economy. The cause of the lack of faith in the dollar is, in large part, the debt. There is a remedy that can save the dollar—and the economy—but it requires comprehensive, structural reform, as outlined in my new book*, and truly committed, new leadership.

*   Joe Arminio is the author of The Decline And Fall Of The American Way.