What should Republicans say now that the GDP is growing, the deficit is shrinking, and gas prices are falling? Well, says “thoughtful” Republican Reihan Salam, well, this is what Reihan said:
According to Texas State University economist David Beckworth and National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru, the chief problem with the Republican worldview in the post-crisis years is that it has coupled calls for rapidly shrinking the federal deficit with fervent opposition to monetary stimulus, which the GOP has warned will lead to an inflationary spiral. Instead, Beckworth and Ponnuru insist that the Federal Reserve ought to have done more. They argue that the Fed ought to have announced that it would buy assets until nominal spending, or NGDP, reached a target level and that it intended to keep nominal spending growth on a predictable path. Had the Fed charted such a course, Beckworth and Ponnuru believe, the goal of fiscal consolidation would have been much easier to achieve, as higher nominal incomes would have kept more workers employed and more homeowners afloat, thus reducing the pressure to increase transfers. Many argue that NGDP targeting of the kind championed by Beckworth and Ponnuru is much easier said than done and that it is no panacea. That might be true. What is also true is that successful fiscal retrenchment efforts in countries like Canada and Sweden were accompanied by the same kind of accommodative monetary policy that American conservatives tend to oppose.
Well, it is an interesting idea, and it also is the “kind of accommodative monetary policy that American conservatives tend to oppose” and in fact did oppose for the first six fucking years of the Obama Administration, which is something that a thoughtful dude like Reihan might have been expected to notice—though, apparently, he didn’t.
So, apparently, Reihan’s advice to the Republican Party boils down to this: Guys, if you had only done the precise opposite of what you did do for six long years—if only you had helped President Obama develop an effective response to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression instead of actively sabotaging the president’s every effort—well, you wouldn’t be totally devoid of the slightest shred of credibility on the issue of economic growth. But since you didn’t, you are.
