One of the prime arguments of the austerity now now now people has been that you can’t do the sensible thing — run deficits while the economy is depressed, then turn to budget-balancing once recovery is well in place — because that will lack credibility. Only by imposing immediate suffering, at great cost to employment, can you convince the invisible bond vigilantes that you really mean business.

And then I learn from Digby that some of these same people just love Paul Ryan’s budget plan — a plan that calls for a huge increase in public debt over the near term, offset by hypothetical spending cuts four decades from now:

There’s only one way to read this: it’s not about the deficit — it’s about the deficit as an excuse to dismantle social programs.