To Spend, or Not To Spend

The lesson David Brooks takes, from the chaos wrought by conservative "principles," is a need to return to conservative principles:

Democrats have done well in suburbia recently because they have run the kind of candidates who seem like the safer choice — socially moderate, pragmatic and fiscally hawkish. They, or any party, will run astray if they threaten the mood of chastened sobriety that has swept over the subdivisions.

Patio Man wants change. But this is no time for more risk or more debt. Debt in the future is no solution to the debt racked up in the past. This is a back-to-basics moment, a return to safety and the fundamentals.

What's he writing about here, really? He's weighing in, with all the weight a conservative can have in the argument (which isn't much, these days), on a question we're facing in the coming months. What's most important to this country right now: bringing government spending under control, or getting the economy back on track?

On the side of limiting spending we have, among others, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and Concord Coalition. They've been campaigners for years for what they consider fiscal responsibility, which to them means balancing the budget and cutting back on "entitlements," like Social Security and Medicare. They've been very successful in making the need to "cut back on entitlements" part of conventional wisdom.

But there has been some real push-back on this notion in the past few years from economists like James Galbraith (son of John Kenneth), Brad DeLong, and Paul Krugman. And now that we're headed into the worst recession since the Great Depression, they're getting good traction because a pull-back on government spending is likely to exacerbate the shutdown of the American economy. Instead, they will argue, the right thing to do right now is actually to increase the national debt.

It's an interesting argument. And since James Galbraith and Paul Krugman are heroes of mine, you can be pretty sure where I'll come down on it. But I'm looking forward to the debate.

Update: Paul Samuelson at the Washington Post is firmly in the Pete Peterson camp.