See this brilliant article by Joel Kotkin explaining why the Democrats love the deficit. I’ve just posted the following comment to it:
Brilliant. Explains why the Dems, increasingly dependent on singles, care so little about the deficit, which gives them all sorts of goodies by imposing heavy burdens only on other peoples’ children.
Optimism at end that this sort of selfishness will end some time in the future when it crashes against the demographic wall of all those other peoples’ children growing up and being able to vote is, at least until explained further, unpersuasive. Why won’t all the current singles who will have died out be replaced by new waves of singles in the future, produced by the same forces that have produced those we are stuck with now?
” Cheney to Treasury: “Deficits don’t matter”
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill was told “deficits don’t matter” when he warned of a looming fiscal crisis.
O’Neill, fired in a shakeup of Bush’s economic team in December 2002, raised objections to a new round of tax cuts and said the president balked at his more aggressive plan to combat corporate crime after a string of accounting scandals because of opposition from “the corporate crowd,” a key constituency.
O’Neill said he tried to warn Vice President Dick Cheney that growing budget deficits-expected to top $500 billion this fiscal year alone-posed a threat to the economy. Cheney cut him off. “You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he said, according to excerpts. Cheney continued: “We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.” A month later, Cheney told the Treasury secretary he was fired.
The vice president’s office had no immediate comment, but John Snow, who replaced O’Neill, insisted that deficits “do matter” to the administration.”
Source: [X-ref O’Neill] Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004
–Cobra