A couple of days ago the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein argued that if you want to understand why did the Republicans “turn against stimulus,” you shouldn’t listen to what they say but instead “[a]sk a psychologist.”
He thought Republican opposition to payroll tax cuts by the likes of Paul Ryan and Grover Norquist was particularly in need of psychological analysis and explanation. If that’s the case, then Klein should also recommend psychological counseling to the editors of USA Today. Not generally known as critics of Obama, their editorial criticized the plan Obama presented to Congress Thursday night because
[i]t relies heavily on slashing the Social Security payroll tax for an extra year. This would give employees more money to spend and employers an incentive to hire, but it would further deplete a program that is already running in the red. It would squander tax cuts on companies that need more consumer demand, not tax breaks, to induce them to hire. And it would make it even harder to restore the tax a year from now.
Either USA Today‘s editors also need to visit one of Ezra’s shrinks, or those Republicans who oppose extending the payroll tax cut don’t.
