“moral imperative”

Romney may be saying this just for campaigning purposes, but it’s still worth talking about it:

“It is a moral imperative for America to stop spending more money than we take in,” Mr. Romney says in the ad, which will be running when he arrives in Iowa on Tuesday for a bus tour and an orchestrated blitz of appearances by surrogates leading up to the caucuses on Jan. 3.

No. There is nothing “immoral” about spending more than you take in. This practice has a name: investment. Did I spend more than I took in while studying for my various degrees? Of course I did. And it might actually have been “immoral” not to do that, since my entire future depended on it.

Moralization of the deficit is one of America’s political problems, in my opinion. Then again, moralizing just about anything is one of the characteristic American national traits. It’s not always a bad thing, but quite often it is.

Ross Perot moralized the deficit in 1992, and then we all watched as Bill Clinton and a strong economy simply eliminated the deficit in nearly comical fashion within a couple of years.

As for the debt, last I checked, the U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP is actually quite a bit lower than it’s been under many previous Presidents, including Reagan. Debt/deficit hysteria is simply a convenient tool for those who think it’s “immoral” for the government to tax and spend.