These days, if tax cut hawks nod at all to cutting deficits, it's with the false promise that tax cuts bring more growth, even at lower rates, and thus more revenue available for deficit reduction.
When it was formed, its organizers said that the commission would prove that the Tea Party, which tends to like the idea of cutting deficits rather than actual cuts, could in fact come up with a specific plan – one with far more ambitious goals than the joint Congressional committee that is supposed to release its recommendations next week.
Cutting spending is related to, but in important ways different from, cutting deficits.
And their numbers will surely grow once the Republican establishment's panacea of tax cuts proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress.
The sequester required by the supercommittee's failure would abruptly wring about $110 billion in new spending from next year's budget, but the upcoming GOP measure is more gentle in the near term, cutting deficits this year and next by less than $20 billion – though the cuts add up to more than $300 billion over the coming decade.
The Republicans talk about cutting deficits, but a party that campaigns to restore the $400 million in Medicare cuts included in the health care law is not serious about averting a fiscal meltdown.
(VoxEU Stiglitz on the dangers of cutting deficits too soon.
He said the next couple weeks would demonstrate whether Republicans are "serious" about cutting deficits.
Ms. Lagarde said she was in favor of both cutting deficits and driving growth.
Ireland, Greece and Spain are cutting deficits that last year reached, respectively, 14.3 percent, 13.6 percent and 12.2 percent.
In turn, cutting deficits reduces growth, as does reduced lending by banks trying to restore their balance-sheets.
