Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

This Brat is the Worst

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In one week the voters of the 7th district will send a self-styled “economist” named David Brat to the House of Representatives.  I am amused that Mr. Brat advertised himself as an economist but advocates policies that have already been tried and have proven to be at best ineffective and at worst disastrous.

When running in the primary, Mr. Brat advocated auditing the Federal Reserve.  Perhaps this self-styled economics wizard has missed the years of debate concerning the Federal Reserve’s policy of buying Treasury and mortgage-backed securities.  The numbers are available for all to see who have any interest, on the Fed’s website.  Perhaps Dave’s real problem is that he believes that the black helicopters that the United Nations will use to institute “world government” are secretly hidden in the basement of the New York Federal Reserve on Liberty Street in downtown NYC.

Of course Brat wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but offers no reasonable alternative.   Dave wants to allow sales of health insurance across state lines, but this would only encourage a race by insurance companies to the bottom of the insurance barrel.  I wonder how all of those folks from Hartford Connecticut and Manhattan will adjust to life in Mississippi?

Dave wants to have a self-styled balance-budget amendment.  This guy really live in a Disneyland bubble.  For instance, a recent article in the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics strongly makes the case that more deficit spending in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis would have led to a much stronger recovery. Brat’s policy of supporting a balanced-budget amendment strongly echoes the restraints placed on European governments by the Treaties of Maastricht and Amsterdam that are currently supported by the Germans.  This extreme-type of infallible austerity has led to levels of unemployment in the Euro zone that are often at 10% for the general population and youth unemployment that approaches 50% inGreece, Portugal and Spain.  It is unbelievable to me that a serious student of economics would loo0k at this unsustainable crisis and advocate the policies that brought it on.

— Les Schreiber

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7 responses to “This Brat is the Worst”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    place holder…

  2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
    LifeOnTheFallLine

    Ohhhhhhh, bratwurst, I get it…!

  3. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    “A recent article in the Journal of Post-Keynesian Economics strongly makes the case that more deficit spending in the wake of the 2008-2009 financial crisis would have led to a much stronger recovery.”

    So, what are you saying, Les? A $1.6 trillion deficit wasn’t big enough? We needed to run a bigger deficit? Hah! Hah!

    As I recall my Economics 101 textbook written by Mr. Samuelson, a widely respected Keynesian economist, governments are supposed to run budget deficits during downturns as a counter to recessionary forces but are supposed to run surpluses during boom times as a counter to the excesses of the booms. Trouble is, given the way politics works and modern-day Keynesian economists function as apologists for the political class, the United States never runs surpluses (unless you want to count three years during the unsustainable Internet boom). The foot is always on the peddle and the debt never gets paid down.

    But dumb ol’ Dave Brat, he’s got these simplistic ideas about the way the economy works. He’s not nearly as smart as the braniacs at the Fed who’ve done such a great job of running the economy!

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      When I see a Congressman – Dem or GOP who does not know how much our revenues actually are ( about 1.5 trillion if you do not count FICA money) or they do not know what “social security running out of money” REALLY MEANS when we continue to take in almost a trillion a year in FICA, or they do not understand the difference between Medicare Part A and Medicare Part B in terms of what money pays for each….

      but they are more than willing to make pronouncements about how to balance the budget – call me a skeptic.

      Mr. Brat on his webpage advocates moving the eligibility age for SS and Medicare to 70… would indeed probably largely fix them as he correctly points out that people do live a lot longer now but not sure what he would do about 65 year olds who have pre-existing conditions and cannot but insurance in the market – at any price.

      Mr. Brat does not strike me so far as a particularly sharp knife in the fiscal conservatism drawer – but we’ll see.

  4. JIP Avatar
    JIP

    Mr. Schreiber, if you want to move product in the House of Representatives, heck, in just about any legislative body, better come equipped with a whole lot of patience and good, new ideas. Rep. Brat has done just that.

  5. salz Avatar
    salz

    No, he doesn’t. If you watched last night’s debate between Jack Trammell and Mr. Brat, you saw a doctrinaire ideologue in Brat, who apparently is unable to think outside his personal box. I think he managed to get two comments in all of his answers. 1) Repeal Obamacare; 2) Send an economist to congress. He obviously is unable to see that the issues are complex (as Mr. Schriber points out in his writing above) and that Obamacare has little, if anything, to do with the burgeoning Ebola issue or American foreign policy.

    While it may sound good to say “send an economist” to congress, as Mr. Brat continually did, the economist needs the ability to think which Mr. Brat clearly illustrated he didn’t. The world is complex, the issues much deeper than any stump speech, any 30-second commercial, and Mr. Brat thinks the “free market” is the answer to any, and all, problems, ideas, concepts, issues. But he’s only talking about the “market” as he defines it. As Mr. Trammell pointed out, Brat doesn’t believe, for example, in a free market in labor.

    Anyone who studies true economics as the “free market” practices it today, realizes that “the money” has set up a system where they have no competition. In the area I know the most about, the absurd transportation “public private partnerships” process, they (the American Legislative Exchange Council) has literally written the state laws and managed a federal program called TIFIA to ensure they profit at the expense of taxpayers. They refuse to have the “buyer” (the taxpayer) in the room when these P3 contracts are negotiated, claiming building an American highway to toll drivers is somehow “Proprietary information.” We taxpayers can’t “beware” when even Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board can’t see the contracts before they up-down vote on the state’s (actually part of) funding.

    The money in Mr. Brat’s “free market” will always take care of itself, leaving taxpayers again, with an empty bag.

  6. Andi Epps Avatar
    Andi Epps

    Brat might be “the economist” but that is not what voters need to know. He is a religious nut as well. He wants to marry the church to his quasi-capitalistic dreams.
    If you want conservative, Look at Carr. I finally uploaded the entire Goochland audio. You can find it here:
    https://www.facebook.com/nktownhall
    When my 18 year old history loving son, listens to this man and says, “Mom, he’s so full of sh*t!”, it should matter to those old enough to know better.

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