A house of cards

What a waste and a tragic, wrong direction.

So much time and angst and political capital spent on whether we're going to cut this or that spending program from the budget . . .

. . . when the economists that I respect all say that we shouldn't be cutting spending at all.

We should be spending even more to create jobs, and don't worry about the deficit right now. Cutting spending in the way that they're doing it -- Repubs and Dems alike; they're just arguing about what and how much -- is going in increase unemployment, possibly trigger another recession, and only increase the deficit, because tax revenue from sales tax and income tax will drop.

And then the Repubs will say we didn't cut enough. And the people will believe them, instead of the wiser and more economically sound progressives who know that the most effective way to deal with high unemployment is for the federal government to create jobs.

Last year's stimulus package should have been about twice as large -- more jobs would have been created, and we'd be much further along toward the elusive recovery. Instead, we have a soiaring Wall Street and CEO recovery and stagnated middle class jobs recovery.

This being Ronald Reagen's centennial birth year just makes it worse, because even liberal voices like PBS are celebrating The Great Communicator -- who, truth be told, is the one who started us on this downhill slide -- tax cuts for the rich, trickle down economics, blah blah blah. It's the Big Lie; it doesn't work.

Ralph