"Defict reduction" is a cover for more "Starve the Beast" tax-cuts and attacks on health care reform

Ezra Klein at Wonkbook, clarifies the agenda underlying much of the fiscal debate, pointing out that under the revenue/spending scenario deemed by current law - with the Bush tax cuts due to expire unless revived by new legislation - "We'll only have giant deficits if Congress wants giant deficits":

If Congress lets the Bush tax cuts expire or offsets their extension, implements the Affordable Care Act as scheduled and makes or offset the Medicare cuts prescribed by the 1997 Balanced Budget Act — which (the Congressional Budget Office) calls the “extended baseline scenario” — the national debt will be totally manageable.

If Congress passes laws extending the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the cost, repealing the Affordable Care Act and its cost controls and protecting doctors from Medicare cuts without making up the savings elsewhere — the “alternative fiscal scenario” — the national debt will be totally out of control:

This is a good time to remind everyone that when you hear politicians telling you that their plan cuts taxes or balances the budget, you always need to ask what baseline they’re using. Almost all the plans on the table, for instance, do less to balance the budget than simply doing nothing. But since they use a version of the “alternative fiscal scenario” as their baseline, they don’t have to admit that before they make the deficit somewhat better, they’re first planning to make it much, much worse.   (Charts are based on the most recent CBO budget report.)

Klein's explanation of the CBO scenarios make it clear that the GOP's deficit hype, in particular, is predicated on continuing or  pursuing even greater "Starve the Beast" tax cuts in order to justify their attacks on the federal budget and on Medicare and health care reform. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire according to present law and returning to Clinton-era rates keeps the federal budget in balance through 2035.

The cynicism of the hysteria being generated around federal deficits is unbounded in certain circles.

Update:  Ezra Klein adds this to his commentary today:

We have a congress problem, not a deficit problem. The deficit only explodes if the next few congresses vote to detonate it. Congress doesn't have to extend the Bush tax cuts without offering offsets, or put off the Medicare cuts without paying for them in other ways, or do the easy parts of the health-care law without doing the hard parts. The answer to this, however, is not a high-stakes negotiation over the debt ceiling, where one false move could bring down the American economy, but a much-strengthened version of PayGo, where deficit-increasing deviations from current policy need to be offset with spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere.

Politicians are constantly talking about the need to signal seriousness to the markets, but what could be more serious than saying that they will work from the baseline in which America's deficits are much more under control, and though they intend to change those policies, they do not intend to deviate from the manageable deficit path they've already agreed to? That must be preferable to saying that Congress chooses to believe it will vote to increase the deficit by trillions over the next 10 years, but that the market shouldn't worry as the two parties plan to stop the government from paying its bills and throw the financial system into chaos if the other party doesn't agree to the deficit-reduction strategies they prefer.