Every time Washington goes through a new bout of deficit hysteria, it’s important to remember that most of the politicians warning about the dangers of the annual deficits or the national debt don’t really care about them. From the The Hill:

House Republicans say they have no plans to pay for the extension of the Bush-era tax rates, a move that could erase the deficit reduction they have achieved since winning their majority in the chamber in 2010.

The income and investment tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 are set to expire at the end of the year and are at the center of a thicket of fiscal decisions that Congress must make in the next several months.

While President Obama and congressional Democrats want to extend only the Bush rates for middle-income earners, Republicans have long argued that the entire slate of tax rates should be kept in place until Congress can agree to a complete overhaul of the tax code.

Allowing all the tax rates to return to the levels in effect under the Clinton administration (or finding pay-fors for them) would reduce the deficit by roughly $4 trillion over the next decade. The first option simply requires Congress to do nothing, but it would dramatically reduce the federal deficit and cumulative debt.

If Republicans really thought the deficit was some huge pending moral and fiscal disaster, they could easily fix it by simply letting the tax cuts expire as scheduled. The main reason some projections of the long term deficit are so high is because the projections assume the same politicians who claim to be so worried about the deficit are actively planning to increase it by passing an unpaid-for extension of the current tax cuts.

The deficit fear-mongering has nothing to do with the deficit. It is only an excuse to justify cutting programs that help regular people.