Thread by @LarryGlickman

In the very sentence before before they quote Mulvaney confessing that GOP deficit hawkery is now and long has been complete bs, the New York Times applies that label to him as a description of what he was like as a member of Congress, as if it were a real thing. /1

It' hard to overestimate how damaging the discourse of the "deficit hawk"--elevated by the media as a mark of seriousness--has been to the United States and much of the rest of the world, particularly in the last 15 years. /2

Deficit hawkery of the Paul Ryan sort was celebrated by the media even though Ryan was also a naked hypocrite, who voted against the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Budget Commission that he sat on./3
politico.com/story/2012/08/…

Despite the hypocrisy and political opportunism of the so-called "deficit hawks," the Times & other media outlets continued to take the myth seriously. Here is a story from 2 years ago about how the GOP is "learning to love deficits they once loathed."/4
nytimes.com/2018/02/08/us/…

When the Republicans voted for Trump's tax cut for the ultra wealthy in 2017, the Times spoke of the "once mighty deficit hawks" who voted for it, once again assuming that this had once been a widely-embraced principled position. /5
nytimes.com/2017/09/28/us/…

Remember that the House GOP unanimously voted against the Obama stimulus that likely saved the country from economic calamity (and that plan had already been pre-emptively scaled back to appease the deficit hawks). /6
nytimes.com/2009/01/29/us/…

This tweet by @adam_tooze, introducing a valuable thread by @Brad_Setser, suggests some of the damage that deficit hawkery has done not just in the United States and the need to launch a discourse about the dangers of underspending. /7

https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1230228058642059264

@adam_tooze @Brad_Setser As an addendum to this thread, it appears that the term "deficit hawk" was popularized in 1992 during the Clinton campaign. For example, this piece call Leon Panetta a "deficit hawk who might calm fears of Clinton as a tax-and-spender." /8
newspapers.com/clip/45345624/

@adam_tooze @Brad_Setser And here's DLC head, Al From, describing himself as a "deficit hawk" shortly after Clinton was elected in 1992. /9
newspapers.com/clip/45345950/

@adam_tooze @Brad_Setser Roger Altman, who became Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, was also described as a "deficit hawk" in this profile shortly after Clinton was elected./10
newspapers.com/clip/45346149/