Myths/liberal policies put us more in debt
| Budget Crisis Propaganda |
Claim: Liberal policies cause more debt, while "conservative" policies reduce it.
This is the opposite of the truth. From a fiscal viewpoint, liberal policies tend to do two things:
- Engage in common-good investment that:
- improves the economy over the long term (and often in the short term as well, e.g. stimulus spending)
- disproportionately benefits those with the most need
- Where spending is increased, taxes -- especially on those with the most surplus, i.e. the rich -- are increased to pay for the spending.
- Liberal policies and laws frequently provide more overall benefit without actually being more expensive than existing policies and laws.
- Obamacare, for example, was projected to be deficit-neutral (despite repeated right-wing claims that we "can't afford it") and is actually turning out to save more money than expected.
The anti-liberal mainstream media tends to dishonestly frame such responsible, forward-looking policies as "tax-and-spend" -- leaving many people with the image of personally being drained by taxation in order to pay for heedless liberal indulgence; an equally honest phrase for "conservative" policies would be "borrow-and-spend", since that has been the historical pattern for Republican/"conservative" administrations since the Reagan era.
"Conservative" – a misnomer for "Republican" – policies have been largely responsible for the deficit-growth that "conservatives" like to complain about.
Claim Examples
"Soon, I fear, this nation will become bankrupt and it we will be turned over to the communists/Marxists/socialists/liberal/progressives that have been weighing down our spending by encouraging deadbeats to go on welfare and suck this nation dry." - Google+, 2014-02-08