Which Party Shows Fiscal Restraint?

++David Atkins at Washington Monthly raises this question after the House Budget passed with 287 billion in tax cuts without any balancing revenue. At the same time,he argues that no one can tell the differences between the parties because the Democrats are actually practicing austerity. In other words, the actual politics of political economics is reversed to the general image of the parties. 

++With the re-emergence of the cheerleaders for the Iraq War in the news,including the incredible Weekly Standard piece written by Dick and daughter Cheney,this got me to do a rough tab of some of the most egregious budget excesses in recent memory.
(The Cheney piece ran his best hits on Iraq--that Saddam had connections with Al Qaeda,was working on Weapons of Mass Destruction,etc.)

++The American economy represents about 22.5% of the world's economy. It is about 16.8 trillion dollars.

++Now let's look at the true Audacity of Then.
The cost to the economy of the Bush Tax cuts,according to this week's study in Al Jeezera,$6.6 trillion.
The estimated cost of the Afghanistan-Iraq Wars: $4-6Trillion.
The Cost of the F-35b,not so stealth bomber: $1 trillion.
The Cost of Privatized Social Security proposed by George W. Bush: $2.5 Trillion

++Total (with top estimates of the wars): $16.1 Trillion.  

++In other words,the whole GOP agenda during the Bush years ,nearly cost us the entire American budget--In fact it did for those years(our economy then was 16.08 trillion), with the exception of privatizing Social Security, which didn't happen. 

++Or to out it another way,all these items were equivalent to about one-fifth of the entire world economy.

++Now I would say you would have to square the circle to say you were a fiscal conservative with this record. 

++I have been thinking about this because I have noticed during the Obama era that all the GOP proposals simply don't add up. Savings turn into deficits. Proposals to privatize lead to greater national debts. I guess War is Peace. This is Orwellian mathematics. But maybe the American voter will believe that the House GOP are fiscal conservatives. Certainly they fell for the last guy.