(In honor of the sequester, and the games being played this month in Washington, I’m updating a post that first ran last year…)

You’ve been hearing the drumbeat: We can’t afford clean energy, or high-speed rail, or a green economy, because there just isn’t any money, and unless we cut the deficit RIGHT NOW, the entire world will end and xxxx. We certainly can’t afford to do anything about climate change (you know, that thing that might actually CAUSE the end of the world as we know it) because we just don’t have any money.

There’s just one problem: It’s complete and utter hogwash.

When the GOP is in office, they spend like drunken sailors on whatever they feel like: Unfunded wars, unfunded Medicare part D, unfunded supplements to big oil, big coal, big ag… and of course, tax cuts. And when asked, they say, “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.” When Bush took office there was both a surplus and a budget plan to keep us in surplus… and the GOP set it on fire and tossed it out the window.

When the GOP is in office, they spend like drunken sailors on whatever they feel like: Unfunded wars, unfunded Medicare part D, unfunded supplements to big oil, big coal, big ag… and of course, tax cuts. And when asked, they say, “Reagan taught us that deficits don’t matter.” When Bush took office there was both a surplus and a budget plan to keep us in surplus… and the GOP set it on fire and tossed it out the window.

When the Democrats are in office, suddenly the GOP gets religion – the old time religion, the kind that says borrowing is immoral and we must cut cut cut (except for defense and oil subsidies and the other stuff that the GOP loves – we can only afford to cut DEMOCRAT stuff).