Nobody Cares About the National Debt Until Trying to Win a Political Argument

If you're a normal person who pays attention to politics, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Washington can't decide whether deficits are bad or not. Well, I have one easy trick that will help you make sense of it all.In Washington, when you hear people complain that this or that piece of legislation will "explode" the deficit, what they are really telling you is that they don't like the legislation.It's really that simple. Good legislation, like good food, movies, novels and pretty much everything else except for dogs (they're all good), is in the eye of the beholder. A politician or partisan who thinks a proposal is worth doing will think it's worth doing even if it increases the deficit. If he thinks a proposal is bad, he might argue that it's bad on the merits. But you can be sure that if it also increases the deficit, he will cite this fact as a major reason why it is bad.That is the role deficits -- and the national debt -- play in our politics. Anti-debt talk serves as dye marker for some more fundamental objection.  Continue reading...