The GOP and their ‘magic asterisks’ - Maddow blog
The GOP and their ‘magic asterisks’ - By Steve Benen
(of St Ronnie's voodoo economics)
In 1981, the newly inaugurated Reagan administration presented Congress with a budget plan filled with an odd little trick that came to be known as the “magic asterisk.” The technique, as Michael Kinsley explained a few decades ago, “consisted of hiding phony cuts in the small print of various budget documents in order to exaggerate the Administration’s success in spending reduction and to minimize the projected deficit.”
In effect, the “magic asterisk” represented illusory spending cuts that the Reagan White House promised to figure out later. The new Republican administration didn’t want to come right out and say, “We can’t figure out how to make our numbers add up,” so they used the asterisks as placeholders.
At the time, some Republicans in Congress weren’t quite sold on the idea, so Reagan’s aides asked allies in the media to attack them. It worked – GOP lawmakers “beat a tactical retreat” and gave in to Reagan’s bogus budget games. The result was some of the largest deficits in American history, even after Reagan had promised the country the opposite.
A generation later, congressional Republicans aren’t questioning the trick; they’re embracing it. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) took a look at the new House GOP budget blueprint and told the Washington Post, “They have a magic asterisk.”
More
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-gop-and-their-magic-asterisks?cid=eml_mra_20150318
