Hippocrat Hypocrisy Award: St. Alan

This week’s winner of the Hippocrat Hypocrisy Award is the saintly Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan. Yes, Mr. Andrea Mitchell displayed an unusual penchant for hypocrisy with his testimony before the Congressional Committee on the Budget last week.

The important part of his testimony occurs here:

… our budget position is unlikely to improve substantially in the coming years unless major deficit-reducing actions are taken. (Emphasis Added)

Now, I may be hallucinating, but I do recall Mr. Greenspan advocating tax cuts in 2001 in order to reduce the size of the surplus that was being generated at that time (in spite of the fact that it would be several more years before the total federal debt could actually be retired). Let’s see, I’m sure he testified to Congress about this…oh yeah – here it is:

…we must avoid a situation in which we come upon the level of irreducible debt so abruptly that the only alternative to the accumulation of private assets would be a sharp reduction in taxes and/or an increase in expenditures.

… it is far better, in my judgment, that the surpluses be lowered by tax reductions…

Now I realize this statement seems a bit convoluted, as I’m sure St. Alan intended. To be clear, though, he is advocating a reduction in taxes in order to avoid paying off the government’s debt too quickly.

At the time, St. Alan’s testimony was a boon to the illegitimate president who came storming in on a “mandate” of conservatism and fiscal irresponsibility. Bush’s subsequent tax cuts blew a hole in the budget the size of Texas. Well, I guess his saintliness is no longer kept up at night with nightmares of too-rapidly paid down deficits!

So now we need “major deficit-reducing actions” in order to improve our “budget position.” OK, I got a suggestion – FIRE GREENSPAN. Here’s the logic, if we hadn’t put in place the huge tax cuts he so happily endorsed in 2001, the deficit in recent years would be significantly reduced! So if we fire him now, we at least have a chance to stem the bleeding in the future.

Oh, why the hypocrisy award you ask? Well, I’ll let Senator Reid explain here and Ron Brownstein of the LA Times explain here.

Let’s de-canonize St. Alan of Hypocrisy!