Sunday, February 22, 2015

Ned Resnikoff — Bernie Sanders, mulling presidential run, adopts novel stance on deficit


MMT-friendly. Focus on the real and not the financial.

Report of what Bernie Sanders said on Thursday in Iowa City. I was unable to attend, but here is a report.

5 comments:

Dan Lynch said...

Sanders said debt reduction is a worthy goal

The Vermont senator is not an MMT adherent

Sanders ... has continued to insist on the importance of reducing the federal deficit.

... one of the Senate’s leading advocates for expanding Social Security benefits.

"Expanding SS Benefits" is Democratic code for "Raising the FICA cap." As far as I know, Bernie has never made a specific proposal to increase SS benefits.

So Bernie's novel stance on the deficit is to .... say he favors reducing the deficit and increasing FICA taxes while not explaining how he would pay for his very modest spending proposals?

OK, so Bernie is a politician and politician's lie, it's part of their job description. FDR was elected on a promise to balance the budget and Syriza was elected on a promise to end austerity. Ha Ha Ha.

I'm glad that Bernie brought Stephanie to Washington -- if nothing else it should be an awesome learning experience for Stephanie.

Other than that, I don't see Bernie going anywhere. Despite pretending to be an independent, Bernie has been loyal to the Democratic party and has taken money from Hillary Clinton, so he's not likely to mount a serious primary challenge to Hillary. He's too old to appeal to young people, and if by some miracle he became president, he would enter office 4 years older than Ronald Reagan -- think about that!

Tom Hickey said...

No, Bernie Sanders is not going to become president. Nor is he likely to embrace full-on MMT. But as the article points out, there is some influence there.

These things happen gradually. This is another few inches on the last mile.

Matt Franko said...

Dan consider he is not lying he just doenst understand it... perhaps yet...

Dan Lynch said...

@Matt, Stephanie has often told the story of an unnamed Congresscritter who told her in private "look, I agree with you that the deficit doesn't matter, but I can't say that in public."

What do you want to bet the unnamed Congresscritter was Bernie? :-)

Tom Hickey said...

To be politically correct a politician has to act like we are still on the gold standard. Even a former Fed chair (AG) said that this is the way he operated the Fed.

Conservatives never accepted FDR leaving the gold standard or "I am now a Keynesian" Nixon shutting the gold window on the fixed rate international monetary system.

Spineless liberals and progressives — the faux "left" — fear that conservatives will demonize them in the media if they don't go along. Same with military expenditure, which is not only unnecessary and wasteful of resources, but also destabilizing globally.