Matthew Yglesias wrote this a few days ago, but I didn’t blog about it then, and right now at the present moment there are a bunch of people who need to be told this. Not that it will make any difference of course, but here it is anyway.
Matt quotes Ben Nelson, who like a lot of Republicans and ConservaDems, is saying that now is a terrible time to be working on climate change, health care reform, and economic stimulus, because “When the economy’s not strong there’s a lot of interest in controlling spending.”
This really makes no sense. If Nelson thinks the health care and climate legislation before congress would have a ruinous economic impact or something, then of course he shouldn’t vote for either bill. But that’s independent of the current state of the labor market. In reality, neither bill will have much of any impact on a 12-18 month time horizon since their provisions take time to phase-in. Both are aimed at long-term problems—the economic devastation wreaked by an out-of-control health care system and the environmental devastation wreaked by out-of-control greenhouse gas pollution. There’s never a perfect day to tackle a long-run problem, but delaying action doesn’t help the economy in the short-run and only makes it harder to tackle the problem.
On controlling spending, this is nuts. With the economy weak Nelson wants to do . . . what? Lay off teachers? Halt infrastructure projects? Make sure that kids whose parents are unemployed end up malnourished? The economy is suffering from a catastrophic collapse in overall spending with households, businesses, states, and municipalities all pulling back. If the federal government pulls back too we’re going to go down the drain.
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