The Deficit-Hawk Takeover - How Austerity Politics Constrained Democratic Policymaking - By David Stein

Accordingly, the IRA’s discussion of the deficit is an improvement to the Rubinomics-inflected one that reigned from the 1980s to 2020, which held: Reduce the deficit irrespective of inflation. [...] By contrast, the ascent of the NEC and the rising prestige of the economics profession framed the issue differently for Clinton. [...] Thus, the trajectory of the consumer and household debt service did not shift significantly—and in fact increased—during the era of the Bush deficits (See Figure 1; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 2024a; Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 2024b). [...] The paucity of shelf-ready projects to invest in was also further evidence of the collapse of political imagination and overall of the abandonment of the public sector during the rise of Rubinomics. [...] The official platforms of the Democratic Party track this transformation in policy priorities and prevailing ideologies, from the rise of full employment in the 1940s to the dominance of balanced budgets after the 1980s.