New Column from Paul Krugman today. As usual, an excellent piece.
If you want the main thrust in a sentence, it'd be something like: While everyone is distracted by the war, the GOP is exacerbating a fiscal nightmare at home that no one notices among Iraq-hysteria. Relevant quotes:
[W]e have entered a new stage in the tax-cut debate. Until now, the Bush administration and its allies haven't made any effort to explain how they plan to replace the revenues lost because of tax cuts. Now, however, party discipline is starting to crack: a few Republicans in the House and Senate, and many erstwhile supporters on Wall Street are beginning to notice how much we're looking like a banana republic.
Yes, the banana republic scenario I can see happening. And then after blasting Congress's new budget that makes major cuts in services to the poor:
Aside from its mean-spiritedness, this suggestion [ that the budget can be balanced without significant cuts to programs affecting the middle class] is simply false: our deficits are too large, and our current spending on the poor too small, for even the most Scrooge-like of governments to offer additional tax cuts for the rich without raising taxes or cutting benefits for the middle class.
Every Tuesday and Friday Folks.
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