It wasn’t all that long ago that Nancy Pelosi was the voice of the insane Left. Then years passed and the Democrats went even crazier. Now Pelosi is being accused of being a reactionary sellout over… PayGo.
PayGo, in theory, means that legislation is supposed to be paid for by tax increases or budget cuts. That’s not quite the way it works out in reality, but let’s take the working definition to show the degree of unreality we’re dealing with here.
The attacks on PayGo are because they set some very theoretical limit on spending. And the Left hates even a theoretical limit in concept.
Hence Rep. Khanna tweeted this crazy Marxist rant. “I will be voting NO on the Rules package with #PayGo. It is terrible economics. The austerians were wrong about the Great Recession and Great Depression. At some point, politicians need to learn from mistakes and read economic history. @paulkrugman @StephanieKelton @RBReich.”
PayGo somehow became austerity. But then again, to the Left, anything that smacks of even the faintest fiscal responsibility is neo-liberalism and austerity. If you don’t want to spend 20 trillion you don’t have on an impossible universal health care plan,you believe in austerity.
PayGo opponents are basically making the Venezuelan argument, that the laws of economics are a capitalist conspiracy and we can only thrive by ignoring them. That’s why Venezuela was reduced to eating house pets and burying the dead in mass graves while facing million plus inflation that its Minister of Finance insisted was only imaginary.
Leave a Reply