Ezra Klein has again posted the following federal debt graph on WonkBlog, and I thought it was a good idea to put it up here. It is from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. The main thing that it shows is that the Republican obsession over debt and deficits is completely hypocritical. The only part of the debt that is truly unsustainable is the Bush tax cuts. And that is the only thing that the Republicans are committed to keeping.

I watched a little bit of the RNC tonight. I saw parts of the Bob McDonnell and Scott Walker speeches. I know that I’m a partisan, but I still think I call my own side for its bullshit. I rarely see things that are clearly wrong or highly distorted by Democrats. But with these two guys at the RNC, there was almost nothing that wasn’t false or at least deceptive. One of the biggest things was this claim that we have a trillion dollar deficit. Everyone knows that the reason the deficit is so high is that the economy is bad so there is less revenue and more expenditures on safety net programs. But even apart from this larger context, there is the graph above. The biggest part of our deficit woes are due to the Bush tax cuts and this will only become worse as the decade continues.

I’m willing to admit that there are good ideas on what used to be called right of the political spectrum. But these ideas are all part of modern Democratic Party thought. The only thing that the Republicans have to offer are lies. The one consolation is that if the Republicans get in power, their economic policy will be the same as it always was—you know, socialism.