When it comes to deficits, Congress long ago achieved herd immunity to embarrassment

It’s hard to soar with the eagles when you roost with the deficit hawks.

I joined the latter in 2010 and began spreading the gospel. A $13 trillion mountain of debt loomed above us, signaling dark days ahead. The madman Obama was borrowing $2 million every minute. The damage we were doing to future Americans would forever shame our generation.

Months turned into years, but the apocalypse never came. The Obama recovery stayed slow but steady. As the world kept not ending, we doomsayers lost credibility. Many dropped out of sight for fear of being confused with environmentalists.

Then Trump happened. Seeing his predecessor borrow bigly to goose a bad economy, the self-styled “king of debt” reasoned that he could do the same with a good economy. If the bet went sour and failed to get him reelected, so what? Not his dime.

So Republicans cut taxes and watched the deficit blossom. By 2019 it approached the trillion dollar mark that had so alarmed them during Obama’s first term. You know what happened in 2020.

Like those who came before, the Biden administration will toil in the shadow of Mt. IOU. The mighty peak has doubled in size this past decade, but Joe Biden has been to the mountaintop and knows no fear. His stimulus will dwarf Obama’s though recovery is in full swing. Steven Rattner, a Treasury official in 2009, has called it a Trojan horse for spending that goes “well beyond the immediate challenges of Covid.”

Will the sound of budgetary spaghetti splatting against a wall bring out the debt warriors of yore?

Not in this corner. The nation’s longest economic expansion was turning hawks into Chicken Littles before Obama left office. And once Trump descended his escalator, no one talked about anything but him for the next five years. Who wants to hear about CBO’s extended baseline projections when a loose cannon is smashing deck chairs on the ship of state?

Congress still has its deficit hawks, as we see in the current stimulus battle. But Congress long ago achieved herd immunity to embarrassment. Things aren’t that simple out here in the field. Democrats have reminded the public that The Silence of the Hawks was the only show playing during the Trump years and have politely suggested that it continue under Biden. They’ve also released roving packs of hypocrisy-sniffing hounds that can tear a man to pieces.

For the most part, America’s warring camps have found consensus on deficit spending. Everyone agrees it’s not an issue when their side is doing it. The left has always viewed bean counting as an impediment to its social engineering ambitions. The right, thanks to Trump, now understands that Paul Ryan Republicans were unicorns. The rank and file wanted their share of the pie, not smaller government.

If having more government than we pay for is the real American dream, our last two presidents came through for us like no others. Their 12 years, which represent five percent of the nation’s 245-year history, account for roughly 60 percent of the national debt. Rumors of our democracy being unresponsive to the mood of the voters are highly exaggerated.

Some analysts say debt doesn’t matter, that good stewardship of the economy doesn’t imply a limit on federal borrowing. We worrywarts thought we saw the limit straight ahead in the days of quantitative easing and Government Motors. We didn’t.

Maybe a limit exists, maybe it doesn’t. We have more pressing questions in front of us at the moment. When the moment passes, I don’t expect a prompt notification from the folks who vowed never to let a crisis go to waste. Nor would I expect better from those who borrowed and spent like it was 2010 while boasting of the greatest economy ever.

Aside from that, this hawk offers no predictions. Red tails look good on us; red faces don’t.

Michael Smith is a freelance opinion writer in Georgetown, Kentucky.