Richard Grossman on John Taylor
RG:
John Taylor’s disingenuous op-ed: John Taylor... bashes the White House budget proposals of February 14 and April 13 and lauds the House Republican budget proposal of April 5.... Taylor’s simplifications go so far as to be misleading.... Taylor [implies that when hi]s boss, George W. Bush, was president (Taylor was Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs during the Bush Administration), spending was under control. This implication omits several inconvenient facts. The substantial increase in the government’s budget after 2007 resulted, in large part, from responding to the most substantial financial crisis and recession since the Great Depression. Had government spending not increased dramatically, the Great Recession would have morphed into a rerun of the Great Depression. The financial crisis itself was partially the result of the irresponsible fiscal policies (fighting two wars and cutting taxes at the same time) of that same Bush Administration....
To simplify: reducing the federal budget deficit by an amount and increasing the aggregate of all state budget deficits by the same amount does not demonstrate fiscal rectitude.
To claim, as Taylor does that, “…the House budget plan, with spending in the same range, approximately balances the budget with no increase in taxes…” is misleading. John Taylor should know better.
