Selective Deficit Disorder

I'm so sick of hearing congresspeople, the president, and conservative blowhards bloviate about the need for the health care bill to be deficit neutral, but say absolutely nothing about anything else having to be deficit neutral. These people are very sick with a disease I call Selective Deficit Disorder. I'm so sick of this plague that I wrote my newspaper column this week on the double standard - and how it reveals an intense economic bias among the political class.

If President Obama really cares about the deficit, where is his effort to seriously rein in a Pentagon budget that is far more expensive than any health care plan being debated in Congress? If "budget hawks" in Congress care about deficits, where was their opposition to the Wall Street bailouts? If tea party protesters care about the deficit, where were their protests against President Bush's massive tax cuts?

Nowhere, of course - because these people don't care about deficits when looking at spending that benefits Big Money. They only care about deficits when spending may help millions of working stiffs. That's what Selective Deficit Disorder is all about.

Read the column here.

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