WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Republicans are expected to take control of the House (and possibly the Senate) in next month’s election, largely because the public is outraged that the economy still isn’t growing fast enough to create any substantial number of jobs.

Their political victory isn’t likely to translate into any noticeable improvement in the economy any time soon, however. No matter who wins in November, the economy is fated to a slow, agonizing, relatively jobless recovery.

It’ll take years before the unemployment rate drops to an acceptable level, years before the banking system is fully functioning, and years before the crippled housing market returns to health.

Ed Gillespie on the GOP strategy

That’s not to say that the right government policies couldn’t make a big difference, it’s just that nothing the Republicans have proposed would help much, even if they could enact their economic platform on their first day in office.

And that’s not going to happen. President Obama still has the power of the veto. The more likely outcome of the election will be further gridlock, with neither party able to change public policy at will. That’ll mean more uncertainty, not less.

Given their built-in advantages this year, Republican candidates have been understandably vague about their plans to change economic policy. Many Republican candidates have endorsed John Boehner’s “Pledge to America,” which is full of lofty principles but short on policy details. Read more about the pledge.

Big government’s fault

Inspired by the tea party, the Republicans are pledging to become fiscal conservatives again, to limit the size of government, and to reduce taxes and red tape. In the Republican view, there’s nothing wrong with the economy that isn’t the fault of big government.

However, many of the Republican proposals would actually hurt — not help — the economy if they could be enacted.

Slashing government spending right now would be crippling to an economy that doesn’t have any other source of demand. Keeping taxes low for the richest Americans wouldn’t create many jobs, and would keep the deficits growing. The Republicans’ pledge to repeal the new health-care law and other government regulations would only add to the uncertainty that businesses say is keeping them on the sidelines.

The Republicans say they want to reduce government spending, but they are vague about exactly what should be cut, except to say that discretionary, non-defense spending should be rolled back to pre-recession levels. That category includes only about 15% of all federal spending, and isn’t the part of the budget that’s the problem.

If the deficit is an ocean-sized problem, the Republicans have proposed a solution that would fit in a thimble.

Being vague is probably good politics. A recent poll by Bloomberg News shows that 55% of likely voters agree that the deficit is out of control, but most voters are against specific measures to reduce it, especially the big changes that would be needed to bring the budget into balance.

It turns out that we like the things government does for us, and we also don’t want to pay the taxes necessary to buy those things.

When asked repeatedly by Chris Wallace of Fox News what she’d like to cut from the government, California Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina wouldn’t name a single program, or identify any entitlement program that should be scaled back. Instead, Fiorina leaned on that old standby of political hacks: “waste, fraud and inefficiency.” Watch the interview on the Fox web site.

Sure, there’s plenty of waste in government spending, but it’s not what’s driving our budget deficits, not now and not in the long-run.

Talk a good game

The Republicans talk a lot about fiscal responsibility, but they haven’t done anything about it. The budget was actually in surplus when they took power in 2001, and the first thing they did was to lock us on course for ever higher debts. They cut taxes, mostly for the wealthy. They started two wars on borrowed money. And they kept government spending — especially entitlement programs — growing.

Nothing the Republicans are pledging to do now would alter any of those trends.

So what is behind our mounting debt?

The deficit is at record levels right now, mostly because of the effects of the worst recession in generations, which temporarily lowered revenues and led to temporarily higher spending for stimulus, relief and the bailouts. We’ll have to pay interest on that borrowing for a long time, but the long-term budget costs of this recession are minimal, compared with other factors, especially if we’re able to get the economy growing again soon.

In the medium term (the next 10 years or so), the main causes of the projected deficits are the Bush tax cuts, the costs of the wars, and the drug benefit. The tax cuts alone account for about 55% of the projected deficit at the end of this decade, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In the longer run, excessive growth in health-care costs is the primary reason for the projected deficits. If we don’t get health-care spending under control, we’ll have massive deficits for the next 50 years, no matter what else we do. Read more about our budget problems.

The Democrats, to their credit, tried to do something about it in their health-care law. They could have and should have done much more to “bend the curve” of growth in health-care costs. The law will have to be improved.

But let’s remember which side the Republicans were on when health care was being debated: The side of doing nothing about rising costs.

And when it comes to the economic recovery now, and budget sanity in the longer run, that’s still the side they are on.