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  2. Why I Believe in Fiscal Irresponsibility

Why I Believe in Fiscal Irresponsibility

By mikethemadbiologist on August 2, 2009.

Because fiscal responsibility is a conservative frame:

In its healthcare messaging, the White House has taken an issue more intimate and immediate than perhaps any other in a voter's life and transformed it into an abstract, technical argument about long-term actuarial projections. It's a peculiar kind of reverse political alchemy: transforming gold into lead....

Obama has inherited a shared political vocabulary in Washington (with phrases like "fiscal discipline," which he himself employs) that shapes the contours of the possible and semantically militates against progressive politics at every invocation. If "fiscal discipline" meant that politicians support tax increases on the wealthy or cuts to the military budget to pay for programs, it would be a useful concept. But what "fiscal discipline" means in Washington is cutting government. It means no taxing and no spending. It means "pain" and "sacrifice" and gutting the welfare state. When politicians say they're "fiscally conservative," what it actually means is they're conservative. Full stop.

I'm all for fiscal discipline too. So when do we raise (and create new) the highest tax brackets and cut military spending?

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It would be nice if it were that simple, but in fact it is not. "Fiscally conservative" and "conservative" are not the same thing.
That should be obvious, from the fact that Obama talks about being fiscally conservative?

Comrade, I fail to see how taxing your dick would address the current situation. After all, we need to raise a significant amount of money, not spare change.

The only people I know who are truly fiscally conservative are liberals.

HP... chuckle, snort snort.

In reality neither party is fiscally conservative, they just want to tax different entities different rates and spend the "income" on different programs.

All politicians suck.

Donna B...

In general I'm in agreement with your disdain of politicians. But in recent memory the party that showed actual fiscal responsibility was the Democrats.

And in my personal experience every person I know who is genuinely fiscally conservative is a moderate to progressive liberal. Conservatives like to talk a mean game about it, but shopping at Costco and bitching and moaning about taxes does not a fiscal conservative make!