Recently, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid accused congressional Republicans of scheming “to drag down the economy because it is good for their politics.” His evidence for this remarkable claim is that the GOP has not embraced various legislative initiatives championed by President Obama.

There is, however, another way to look at the stalemate on a wide range of fiscal policy issues. My Economics 21 colleagues recently published a piece by Charles Blahous that made the following argument, drawing on a recent CBO analysis:

Continued deficit spending can prop up the economy in the near term but in the long run it both exacerbates federal fiscal problems and undercuts economic growth.
Thus, as we attempt to cushion ourselves against recession by running large federal deficits, we also weaken the economy our children will inherit. We also increase the probability that we’ll later face our current economic problems all over again, precipitating another future debate on whether we need still more stimulus spending. When that debate happens, federal finances will be even weaker than they are now. Continued deficit spending can thus lead to a vicious cycle in which there is an ever-increasing perceived need for short-term interventions, each of which worsens the long-term picture.
Most economists acknowledge these trade-offs. But sometimes the rhetoric employed to argue for more stimulus spending obscures them.

This crucially important trade-off is why right-of-center policymakers are keenly interested in advancing the cause of medium- and long-term fiscal consolidation as a condition of permitted high levels of deficit spending in the short-run. Keith Hennessey explained this approach in a recent post:

To achieve its principal goal, the austerity, also known as deficit reduction, package does not have to have any immediate fiscal effects. I’ll tell you what: you pick a delayed start of up to five years, however much time you think we need for the economy to fully recover and for us to return to full employment. I’ll commit right now that whatever deficit reduction we negotiate will not begin until we are past your initial delay as long as we actually solve the long-term problem. That way, in your Keynesian view of the world, our austerity / deficit reduction package won’t hurt our prospects for short-term growth.

To the surprise of almost no one, Democrats and Republicans in Congress disagree regarding what a deficit reduction package should look like. Republicans tend to emphasize structural reform of Medicare and Medicaid while Democrats tend to emphasize more modest Medicare reforms and increases in marginal tax rates for high-earners. The problem with the Democratic approach, according to critics on the right, is that the tax increases that have been broached are not large enough to close the fiscal gap and they would have significant disincentive effects.

This is a fairly straightforward, above-board disagreement. It is certainly true that a sufficiently large fiscal stimulus measure might give the economy a short-term boost, and perhaps Senate Majority Leader Reid believes that it is profoundly wrong of congressional Republicans to oppose such a measure. But please recall Charles Blahous’s warning about falling into a “vicious cycle in which there is an ever-increasing perceived need for short-term interventions.”

Of course, it is easy to see why Senate Majority Leader Reid might disagree. If we embrace Blahous’s framework, we have to justify short-term fiscal stimulus that might “weaken the economy our children will inherit.” Why would we be willing to do that? Well, we might be willing to do that if we value our own political survival over future generations of voters and taxpayers or if we believe that America’s future flourishing depends on President Obama’s reelection this fall. I don’t believe that the Senate Majority Leader is indifferent to future generations of voters and taxpayers, but it does seem at least somewhat plausible that he really does believe that the president’s reelection is of the utmost importance. But why would he believe that congressional Republicans, who believe that the president’s prescriptions for America’s economic woes are profoundly wrongheaded, would feel the same way? That is, why would he think that congressional Republicans would believe that undermining America’s long-term growth prospects is worth the short-term relief that might flow from new stimulus measures? One gets the impression that he hasn’t really thought this through.