Reagan Redux: The Truth About Romney Economics

The oversimplification of Romney’s economic plan avoids calling it out for what it really is: an extension of failed Republican economic policies.

In the home of Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick this week, The New York Timesreported that President Obama described Romney’s campaign attacks, which claim all current problems are “the fault of the guy in the White House,” as “an elegant message. It happens to be wrong.”

This is as clear an example as we have of Obama’s inability to make a powerful message in a few words. Sounding professorial, he uses the word “elegant” as if referring to a mathematical proof. Clean and simple, I suppose. But to many a listener and reader, elegant only has positive connotations. Why this loftiness when plain, honest, focused language will do the job?

The fact is that almost all of our current situation is a result of economic policies that were put into effect before Obama took office. Not only is Romney’s message not elegant, but his economic plan will boldly extend these failed policies. His central message is simplistic, ignorant, and, to use a lofty word, ahistorical. In actuality, the plan has been underway since the 1980s and even before, and look where it’s gotten us. It serves the interests of the wealthy very well, but has it served America at all? It’s not the collapse of the welfare state, but the ravages of a rising oligarchy, that are undoing America.

Which brings me to another New York Times piece, Friday’s David Brooks column. Brooks’s methodology as a “thinker” is to develop arguments that he knows will sound plausible to his readers and maybe to a significant swatch of centrists. He is good at these over-simplifications. The column is as unaware or deliberately neglectful of history as ever. What Democrats don’t understand is that the system is broken, he says. Republicans understand this and want to return us to some early (if mythological) economic state. The welfare state is on the cusp of failing; he quotes a Weekly Standard piece on this idea that he thinks definitive. This welfare model, he goes on, “favors security over risk, comfort over effort, stability over innovation.”

This is breathtaking nonsense. The so-called welfare state—whose main features are benefits to the elderly, by the way—favors opportunity for those who have no access to it, substantial government investment in education and research, which are the great sources of innovation, adequate transportation to enable business to operate efficiently, and fewer and more moderate recessions so that the nation does not lose investment, human capital, and many good businesses due to short-term fluctuations.

And, oh, yes, the welfare state does promote some compassion for the less fortunate—those thrown out of work through no fault of their own—and a sense that all of us owe something to each other. And, yes, it does require government.

What’s truly mind-numbing about the Brooks view, which clearly represents a Republican body of what is considered highly sensible thought, is that all the Romney proposals have been on the ascendancy since Ronald Reagan, and some of them before. These include lower progressive tax rates (Reagan and Bush); deregulation and weak regulatory implementation (Reagan, Bush I and II, Carter, and most important for financial regulations, Clinton); reduced social spending on many categories, notably welfare (Reagan and Clinton); few new programs even as social needs change; and inordinately tight monetary policy since Paul Volcker’s chairmanship at the Federal Reserve, to keep inflation and therefore wages in check. And what happened? Stagnating wages, modest capital investment, unequal public education, and collapsing infrastructure. These are the results of Romney economics.

If there is theory at all in the Brooks view, it is of course the spurious generalization that individualism will win the day. Just make everyone take care of him or herself. Republicans love this notion. The other idea is that if business is just allowed to do its job, free of most regulation and taxes, everyone will do just fine. The historical evidence clearly points to the opposite. Look at the levels of inequality in the good old regulation-free and low-tax days of post-Civil War America. Do you we need a better example?

Returning to Obama—he better fight this battle head on, not in professorial dignities, but on the sweaty mat where victory is won. He better understand that the Brooks’s over-simplifications are appealing because they blame victims and relieve the rest of responsibility. Call these things what they are, Mr. President. Make America the responsible society once again. The Romney policies failed not just since George W. Bush, but since Ronald Reagan and even Jimmy Carter.

Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Madrick is the Director of the Roosevelt Institute’s Rediscovering Government initiative and author ofAge of Greed.

Cross-Posted From Rediscovering Government.

The Roosevelt Institute is a non-profit organization devoted to carrying forward the legacy and values of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

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