Tom Friedman is perhaps the most self important columnist for the New York Times, something that ought to earn him a Nobel Prize for self-importance if there were one. He never fails to present his opinions as the gospel, whether or not the actual evidence supports them. His latest column is no exception. Friedman begins in this way:
Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there.
Friedman then goes on to explain that the Republicans in Congress who have insisted on "austerity" measures like sequestration are destroying the future of America.
It is a remarkable litany of half truths and outright misstatements.
First of all, let's look at the most basic misstatements. Only in the mind of a Tom Friedman could sequestration be confused with austerity. The very concept of austerity implies that the government is cut back to the bone. Sequestration did not even stop the rise of spending, it only slowed the rate of increase. Got that? Last year America spent 31.5 billion dollars at the National Institutes of Health according to Friedman (I did not check his numbers). This year, even with the sequester, we will spend more, not less. That is not "austerity".
Another whopper is that the Republicans are "cutting without a plan". That is not true. The Republicans have slowed the rate of increase across the board because that was the plan that president Obama proposed for sequestration. Unless I missed a change of parties, Obama is not a Republican. And, the only reason that the across the board mechanism went into effect is because the Democrats and Obama refused to agree on specific cuts to programs that clearly deserve to be cut.
More important that the misstatements, however, is what Friedman never bothers to consider. He wants to plan for the future, but then just ignores that very concept. If America borrows and spends continually, we will soon reach a point where we cannot borrow any more. Indeed, we might already have reached that point where interest rates began to rise quickly if the Federal Reserve had not taken to monetizing the debt. Let's be clear; "monetizing the debt" means that the Federal Reserve is creating money each month and using it to buy government debt in a greater amount than the new debt is being issued by the Treasury. In essence, rather than borrowing funds in the market, the federal government is just printing new bills and issuing them to the public. If this continues, at some point in the not too distant future we will see our currency plummet on international markets and we will also see major inflation here at home. That would be the result of failing to plan for the future.
Countries that don’t plan for the future tend not to do well there.
Friedman then goes on to explain that the Republicans in Congress who have insisted on "austerity" measures like sequestration are destroying the future of America.
It is a remarkable litany of half truths and outright misstatements.
First of all, let's look at the most basic misstatements. Only in the mind of a Tom Friedman could sequestration be confused with austerity. The very concept of austerity implies that the government is cut back to the bone. Sequestration did not even stop the rise of spending, it only slowed the rate of increase. Got that? Last year America spent 31.5 billion dollars at the National Institutes of Health according to Friedman (I did not check his numbers). This year, even with the sequester, we will spend more, not less. That is not "austerity".
Another whopper is that the Republicans are "cutting without a plan". That is not true. The Republicans have slowed the rate of increase across the board because that was the plan that president Obama proposed for sequestration. Unless I missed a change of parties, Obama is not a Republican. And, the only reason that the across the board mechanism went into effect is because the Democrats and Obama refused to agree on specific cuts to programs that clearly deserve to be cut.
More important that the misstatements, however, is what Friedman never bothers to consider. He wants to plan for the future, but then just ignores that very concept. If America borrows and spends continually, we will soon reach a point where we cannot borrow any more. Indeed, we might already have reached that point where interest rates began to rise quickly if the Federal Reserve had not taken to monetizing the debt. Let's be clear; "monetizing the debt" means that the Federal Reserve is creating money each month and using it to buy government debt in a greater amount than the new debt is being issued by the Treasury. In essence, rather than borrowing funds in the market, the federal government is just printing new bills and issuing them to the public. If this continues, at some point in the not too distant future we will see our currency plummet on international markets and we will also see major inflation here at home. That would be the result of failing to plan for the future.
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