Deficit hawkery is a lie

Digby at Hullaballoo has a particularly excellent long post Guess which “extreme” the public agrees with? about the politics of “deficit reduction”.

The most striking bit is this quote from a poll by SurveyMonkey and Business Insider:

Shockingly, 47 percent of Republicans preferred the House Progressive plan to the sequester.

Yes, you read that right.

If you're not familiar with it, that Progressive plan is pretty interesting. And if you're not familiar with it, perhaps you should ask yourself why you're not familiar with it.

Digby looks at the way the press, the Republicans, and the Obama administration all talk about the deficit and what we can do about it and demonstrates that the deficit itself is not the issue.

That it is an arbitrary political move is proven by the fact that the House progressives have come up with a deficit reduction plan that does not cut the so-called entitlements and reduces the deficit by the same arbitrary number the president and the Republicans agreed upon. And if said deficit must be cut, the public prefers that it be done in this way! And yet, it is dismissed out of hand. At this point we know that deficit reduction per se is a secondary concern. It's about cutting government.