Putting off deficit concerns as a second-term priority, Mike Pence argues in an MSNBC interview that deficit spending has been necessary to keep the economy rolling.

This is a news article by the editor.

The news that the deficit has reached new heights under President Trump is nothing new. I have written and spoken frequently about how the last year’s deficit increased to the level of the Obama stimulus years. What is new are the trickle-trickle of former budget hawks and fiscal conservatives stepping forward to defend the federal government’s out-of-control spending.

In a February 7th MSNBC interview, Mike Pence seems to do just that. Not only does he defend the deficit spending of the Trump administration, he argues the deficit is a trade-off for the booming economy of recent years. While he says the budget will be a second-term priority, he says the priority of this first-term was to “get this economy rolling.”

Pence connects the deficit spending to the President’s “first and foremost” goal, which was “to restore growth.” Even concerning the future outlook of the budget, Pence conceded that Trump believes “the real long-term solution to the fiscal challenges in Washington, D.C., is making sure the budget of every American is growing.”

Seemingly benign, these statements are a clear departure from fiscal conservatism, and the ideals of conservative government generally. One need not be brushed up on their Hayek or Friedman to know that spurring economic growth through deficit spending has long been something conservative and classically liberal economists have warned about. Government inserting itself into the free market is the chief origin of market “bubbles” that eventually burst and create recessions and depressions.

Conservatism, instead, has long focused on limiting government intrusion into the free market and citizens’ bank accounts. Until only a few years ago, conservative talk shows routinely mocked the idea that the government could spend better than individuals could with their money. Now, Pence and others seem to defend the idea of a centrally planned economy, with the President as the country’s CEO. This reflects what most political theorists would consider a progressive vision, if not one that approaches a socialist one.

But, the deficit spending of the Trump administration violates even the progressive principles as laid out in Keynesian economic theory. President Obama, for example, justified deficit spending as a way to lift the United States out of a recession but said such spending should be canceled out by running surpluses in good years.

Mike Pence’s comments suggesting the necessity of deficit spending to keep the economy rolling invites a troubling conclusion: Either the economy is doing well independent of the deficit spending, despite what they claim, and the Trump administration is simply inept and unable to achieve a balanced budget, or the Trump economy is a mirage built on the continuance of Obama fiscal policy, a bubble being fed by the government’s infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy.

Let’s hope it’s the former. The Great Recession resulted from the collapse of only a single market bubble.

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Justin Stapley is the owner and editor of The Liberty Hawk and the voice of The New Centrist Podcast. As a political writer, his principles and ideals are grounded in the ideas of ordered liberty as expressed in the traditions of classical liberalism, federalism, and modern conservatism. You can follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

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