Bill Bennett Plays Imaginary Fiscal Conservative

As always, we are forced to take the tough-talking, fiscal stewards of the Republican Party very seriously.  After all, they pride themselves as the last bit of fiscal sanity in an age of out of control spending that has caused huge amounts of debt to pile up.  Except that spending and the deficit have actually shrunk and leveled off, they would be right.

Very Serious Fiscal Conservative Bill Bennett writes:

If $16 trillion of national debt and the huge deficits each year aren't spending problems, then what is? The United States most certainly has a spending problem. For the president to insist otherwise is dumbfounding but at the same time entirely consistent with his policies.

Eeeewwww Bennett is so tough.  He is such a fiscally responsible person that he surely must know the "huge deficits" he claims to be so concerned about were created by George W. Bush and the GOP.  Barack Obama has shrunk the budget deficit from Bush's all-time high.  As for the debt, no president could have inherited a $1.4 trillion budget deficit and kept debt from piling up.  No one.  If Bush and Bennett's Republican Party had not left President Obama the worst financial situation in history, maybe Bennett would have something to complain about.  But the facts are Obama did not create the debt problem, the deficit problem, the unemployment problem, the GDP problem, or the spending problem.  He inherited all of it from Bush and since Obama has taken office, every single category has gotten better.

But enough of my rant.  Let's see just how fiscally responsible Bennett truly is.  In order to do that, we must look at raw spending data.  So, again, the trusty little graph we've used over and over again shows us just how fiscally insane Bill Bennett really is.

Clearly, as anyone with eyes can see, when spending was increasing at the most rapid rates since WWII, Bill Bennett never complained, never warned about fiscal doom, never did anything.  Over $1 TRILLION of new spending was added to the budget in 7 years and Bill Bennett was silent.  What would cause Bennett to justify such huge spikes in spending then but now be sooooo concerned about spending when it has slowed at the lowest rates in 60 years?

Easy answer actually.  Bill Bennett doesn't care about spending.  He doesn't care about deficits or the debt.  Bush doubled the federal debt and Reagan tripled it and Bennett never said a word.  But Obama inherits over $1 trillion of debt every year and Bennett is stroking out pretending he actually cares.

This is modern Republicanism.  They love spending.  They love debt and care not one bit about deficits.  They just don't want Democrats doing the spending.  Bush increases spending, crashes the economy, issues 8 tax payer funded bailouts and Republicans loved it.  As you can see from the chart, they couldn't get enough of it.  Not until a Democrat takes the White House does spending level off.  And it is with this leveling off that Republicans like Bennett first call it a crisis.  It's truly insane.

However, more must be said of CNN for letting Bennett pretend to be fiscally responsible and trash the president.  In order to be remotely considered "fair" the whole country is forced to accept people who believe the Earth is flat as Very Serious People.  We're all doomed as long as the media doesn't give a rip.