Given the severity of Hurricane Sandy, the expansive nature of the recovery effort, and the fact that there's a presidential election in less than a week, it's not unfair to consider some elements of the crisis through a political lens. Mitt Romney, for example, has talked about scrapping FEMA, which seems rather important right now.
On the other hand, however, right-wing activist Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform offers a terrific example of how not to politicize a natural disaster.
The Houston Chroniclereported that Norquist's group created this ad, leaving them on Virginia doorsteps just yesterday, telling voters, "We've seen storms in Virginia, but none like this ... Barack Obama's policies have added $4 billion in debt each day he's been in office. Americans can't afford this debt."
This appears to be the first far-effort to politicize Sandy in earnest, so let's unpack this a bit. First, comparing the national debt to a natural disaster that's killed dozens of people, while the crisis is still unfolding, is ridiculous, even for Norquist.
Second, more than 100,000 people in Virginia still lack power. Apparently, the new conservative argument is, "Never mind that, now's the ideal time to think about the debt!"
And third, putting hurricane insensitivities aside, the underlying point Norquist is clumsily trying to make doesn't even make any sense -- blaming President Obama for the debt is absurd given the facts. Indeed, the policies driving the debt didn't come from Obama; they came from Norquist's own allies.
Let's review this again (Americans for Tax Reform apparently learns slowly). Towards the end of President Clinton's second term, debt clocks that had been established in various U.S. locations had to be shut down -- the deficit had been eliminated and the clocks had never been set to run backwards. By the time Clinton left office in 2001, the nation not only had a large surplus, it was also on track to pay off the entirety of its debt -- roughly $5 trillion at the time -- by the end of the decade.
Then the Bush/Cheney era happened. Republicans took a massive surplus and turned it into an even more massive deficit, adding the costs of two wars, two tax cuts, Medicare expansion, and a Wall Street bailout to the national charge card. Paul Ryan, the GOP's "leader" on fiscal issues, voted for all of these measures.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) later referred to the Bush/Cheney era as a time in which Republicans decided "it was standard practice not to pay for things." In just eight years, GOP policymakers added $5 trillion to the debt in eight years.
Under Obama, deficit reduction has been less of a priority -- dealing with an economic crisis, thankfully, was deemed far more important -- but the president has nevertheless cut the deficit by over $300 billion since he took office.
But the key takeaway here is that it's Republican policies, not the president's agenda, that's driving the national debt now and into the future.
