I see that the editors of the Washington Post have come around to my point of view:
We’d find the stimulus-now, spinach-later argument more credible if its advocates gave some hint of where the long-term belt-tightening will take place. Even if there is a danger of tightening too soon, any number of measures could be set in motion today that wouldn’t take effect for a year or two or even more. The Bush middle-class tax cuts could be extended one more year, instead of in perpetuity, with an understanding that they will expire in 2012. Adjustments could be made to the formula by which Social Security retirement benefits increase every year, again to take effect down the road. The administration could propose a gradual increase in the gasoline tax.
But neither President Obama nor most of the pro-stimulus chorus have shown any stomach for such measures. Indeed, the one fiscally positive part of health reform — a tax on overpriced insurance plans — was postponed so it wouldn’t kick in until after Mr. Obama had left office, even if he serves two terms. Now any talk of hard choices is deferred to a bipartisan budget commission that has no statutory authority and that will not report until after the midterm elections.
I’d go a step farther. I think it is incumbent upon those who favor, support, and advocate another round of fiscal stimulus to articulate in advance the precise conditions under which they would advocate pro-cyclical real spending decreases to offset the spending they’re arguing for now and just what spending decreases they’d support. And the numbers have got to add up.
Failing that what we’ve got is a ratchet, a system in which real spending as a proportion of GDP only goes up. That’s not just unsustainable it’s nihilistic, an argument for chaos and misery next year, the year after that, or the year after that.
