Not Really Deficit Hawks

Ezra Klein notes that Republicans aren't the deficit hawks they claim to be:

Remembering the Republicans’ stimulus, by Ezra Klein: I see that the Republican convention will feature a debt clock ticking away behind the speakers. It will also, as I understand it, consist entirely of speakers who want to make all the Bush tax cuts permanent without paying for them, and who want to pass trillions of dollars more in tax cuts that they also haven’t said how they’ll pay for.

...The Senate Republicans ... voted for Sen. Jim DeMint’s “American Option: A Jobs Plan That Works.” DeMint’s plan would have extended all of the Bush tax cuts permanently, cut the top marginal rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, the corporate rate from 35 percent to 25 percent and the estate tax to almost nothing.

The proposal would have cost about $3 trillion over the next decade — so a bit less than 400 percent what the stimulus cost — ...not a dollar of it would’ve been paid for..., and the tax cuts were largest for the richest Americans... Yet most every Senate Republican voted for it. And now they’re standing on the stage underneath a debt clock arguing that the Obama administration spent too much. ...

 But both Romney’s and Ryan’s budgets include a tax reform that looks very much like what DeMint proposed...