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**AUGUST 11, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

The Deficit Hawks and the Climate Disaster

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Let's see. Which is more alarming-the debt we are leaving to our
children, or the planet we are leaving to our children? Duh ...

This week's IPCC report suggests that even if we do everything right,
a great deal of deterioration in the Earth's habitability is baked in,
so to speak. And doing everything right will require a lot more public
investment.

Any increase in the public debt is the price we need to pay for rescuing
some kind of life for future generations. But try to find any concern
for habitability in the fiscal alarmism of the usual suspects.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget ,
a creation of the late Peter G. Peterson and his family foundation,
seems stuck on autopilot in a time warp when planetary survival was not
even an issue.

These people pass themselves off as bipartisan centrists. Indeed, they
were instrumental in persuading Obama to create his disastrous
Bowles-Simpson Commission and related automatic budget triggers to cut
public investment.

This $6 million operation exists to persuade legislative and public
opinion of the importance of budget balance, yet its tax forms filed
with the IRS

report its entire lobbying outlay for 2019, including efforts to
influence public opinion, as just $28,681. (This is another good case
for increasing the IRS enforcement budget.)

The Committee's brand of climate denial via budget discipline is more
insidious than the far-right, know-nothing sort. And several Democrats
shamefully lend their names to it.

The Committee's co-chairs include
former Democratic Congressman Leon Panetta, who also served as
Clinton's OMB director and then White House chief of staff, and former
Democratic Congressman Tim Penny. Its directors include former Sens.
Kent Conrad and Chuck Robb, former Reps. Vic Fazio and Jane Harman, and
former CBO director Bob Reischauer, all Democrats, as well as Erskine
Bowles, the Democratic co-chair of the late and little-lamented
Bowles-Simpson Commission.

The Committee's advice is a perfect map of what not to do. In a recent
release
,
the Committee calls on Congress, in the budget reconciliation process,
to "restore the Conrad Rule," a now defunct rule championed by former
Sen. Conrad, requiring every nickel of new investments to be paid for by
new taxes or other cuts. Not.

This long-term undertow of respectable centrist opinion suggests what
Biden is up against as we struggle to temper climate disaster. It
isn't just the Republicans; it's the fiscal scolds among Democrats.

Instead of the Conrad Rule, how about an IPCC rule? Benchmark the $3.5
trillion investment program against what it will take to save the
planet. And spend what it takes.

The climate catastrophe is a threat that exceeds a major war. You wonder
what these people might have been saying after Pearl Harbor? Balance the
budget!

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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The structure of state government, with its centralized power and few
ethical checks, invites scandal after scandal. BY LEE HARRIS

Infrastructure Summer: Bipartisan Bill Boosts Corporate Giants

In broadband and other areas, the corporate dominance that has been an
impediment to progress emerges unscathed. BY DAVID DAYEN

New York Dairy Farms Skirt Clean Water Act Requirements

Farms in New York have used a form of legal arbitrage to shield their
manure management practices from scrutiny. BY LEE HARRIS

The Investigator: Sen. Carl Levin (1934-2021)

The anti-kleptocracy campaigns of the Michigan lawmaker were ahead of
their time. BY CASEY MICHEL

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