Republicans in Congress have been repeatedly ridiculed over the last several months for their new-found outrage over our truly humongous budget deficit. Ridiculed mostly for what can be delicately described as the time-inconsistency of their beliefs.

When Republicans were last in power, they cheerfully operated under the what-me-worry philosophy that nothing had to be paid for. Whether it was humongous tax-cuts for the wealthy, or the huge expansion of entitlement programs that Medicare, Part D represented, or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, nothing at all had to be paid for. The deficit soared, but that mattered not a bit. So what if Bush couldn’t grow the economy? At least he grew the national debt, and by a record amount, no less:

Let’s see, when George Bush swaggered into office on January 20, 2001, he inherited a national debt of $5.73 trillion. Thanks to what he still proudly describes as his prudent fiscal stewardship, the national debt he bequeathed to Obama by the time he fled with his tail between his legs on January 20, 2009 was $10.63 trillion.

And congressional Republicans gave Bush’s fiscal profligacy a standing ovation every step of the way. Which is why Republicans’ new-found serious concern with the deficit, and the national debt, has attracted such loud guffaws throughout the land.

But now, I think, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl has finally clarified why we were mistaken all along in taxing Republicans with hypocrisy:

Kyl said Congress should not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, but when host Chris Wallace asked, “How are you going to pay the $678 billion to keep Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?” Kyl wouldn’t answer. And in fact, he went so far as to say tax cuts should never have to be paid for:
WALLACE: We’re running out of time, so how are you going to pay $678 billion just on the tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year?

KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans (sic) object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

See, what nobody has been willing to appreciate before is that, just like with cholesterol, there are good deficits and bad deficits.

Good deficits result from things like giving tax cuts to the very wealthy. You never have to worry about offsetting things that result in good deficits. Bad deficits result from things like extending unemployment benefits for those who got most badly buggered in the course of the Bush administration’s systematic sodomization of the economy.

So Republicans have been entirely consistent. They consistently supported (and even celebrated) good deficits under Bush. They now consistently oppose bad deficits under Obama.

(Silly me! I see I only gave examples of good and bad deficits before, and I totally forgot to offer definitions. Good deficit: deficit created by or behalf of or in the time of Bush. Bad deficit: deficit created by or behalf of or in the time of Obama.)

The best part is that, if we just suspend all rational thought, and vote Republicans back into power, they’ll go right back to fixing the economy by giving us another round of mega-doses of good deficits.