Paul Krugman's bizarre
screed attacking "Reaganism" is an embarrassingly shoddy
partisan hatchet job. If Krugman wants to argue that most people
would be better off if we returned the marginal tax rates,
regulatory levels, and inflation rates that preceded Ronald
Reagan, that would at least be interesting. But "Reaganism" just
turns out to be the word he shouts repeatedly in a disjointed
temper tantrum over the fact that some people disagree with the
health care "public option."
Regarding income growth since Reagan, Krugman claims, "Moreover,
most of whatever gains ordinary Americans achieved came during
the Clinton years." Then he turns and argues that "politicians in
the thrall of Reaganite ideology dismantled the New Deal
regulations that had prevented banking crises for half a century,
believing that financial markets could take care of themselves."
But the politician in "thrall of Reaganite ideology" who signed
into law a partial repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act was Bill
Clinton, through the bipartisan Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. One of
the Democratic senators who originally voted for it was Joe
Biden. The previous major provision to be repealed was Regulation
Q, in 1980 before Reagan was even elected. Personally, I think
there are arguments on both sides of this issue. On the one hand,
the legislation did create a moral hazard. On the other, the
deregulated and more diversified banks weren't the biggest
contributors to the financial crisis. Either way, however, it
isn't the simple red team versus blue team morality tale Krugman
makes it out to be.
Second, where was the "anti-government fundamentalism" of George
W. Bush? He presided over an increase in defense spending, an
increase in non-defense discretionary spending, created the
biggest new entitlement since LBJ in the form of the Medicare
prescription drug benefit, and signed the $700 billion TARP
bailout Krugman tells us in the next few paragraphs "averted" a
total financial "collapse." Bush increased
Even Reagan, God love him for his tax cuts, disinflation, and
deregulation, wasn't exactly an anti-government fundamentalist.
His reductions in the cost of the federal government as a
percentage of GDP were minor, he ended up adding a new
Cabinet-level department rather than abolishing two as he set out
to do, and Reagan actually
signed the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act into law in
1988 -- an expansion of a "public option" that proved such a
disaster it was swiftly repealed in early 1989.
Finally, Krugman can't be bothered to accurately summarize the
arguments of those who oppose the public option. Never mind
whether it can truly be called fair competition when the referee
decides to enter the game as a competitor -- for example,
the public option will be able to force health care providers to
accept much lower levels of reimbursement than the private
insurers. The argument isn't that people will necessarily abandon
their private coverage en masse for the public option -- it is
that employers offering private insurance will have an incentive
to dump their employees onto the public plan. Even a skeptic of
the unfettered free market can see how that doesn't reflect
competition and free choice.
