I didn’t want to let any more time go by without noting Peter Orszag’s exceedingly lame debut oped in the New York Times yesterday. The takeaway that most took away was: extend ALL the Bush tax cuts for two years. Not just the ones for lower and middle income Americans which could play a significant stimulative role (or the absence of which could further depress demand) but the high income ones too, even though there’s not a lot of good stimulative argument for doing so. Orszag knows numbers and I don’t. So I’m not disagreeing with the economic argument. But look what Orszag actually says.
He says quite clearly that extending all but the upper income tax cuts is the best way to go. But then he writes it off saying that Republicans might not agree to that so, whatever, just do the whole thing. In other words, take a political fight in which the Democrats have the economic argument on their side and in which they most likely have the political argument on their side too and instead of contesting that ground — just concede the whole argument in advance and start the debate on the basis of the Republicans’ maximal position.
Whatever the economic models say, that’s painfully naive as a matter of politics. And politics is not some meaningless froth hovering over the reality of policy. It’s inextricable from it.
Late Update: Greg gets Orszag to sorta kinda half not really walk it back. Boehner take note!
