The Austerity Lobby

Since the early 1990s, an expanding network of Washington and Wall Street notables has warned that the nation is overspending and over-promising, putting the solvency of the Republic and the prosperity of the next generation at risk. With the money and banking panic of 2008, these groups deliberately blurred the long-term need for adjustments in Social Security and Medicare with the unrelated and urgent question of how to recover from a prolonged deflationary downturn. As it turned out, the budget hawks found a receptive audience among media and political elites. Key commentators have embraced the story line of the need for shared sacrifice and grander fiscal compromise and the premise that we can somehow deflate our way to prosperity.