University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The politics of pseudo-scientific economic argumentation: a rhetorical analysis of the rise of austerity economics

(USC Thesis Other)

The politics of pseudo-scientific economic argumentation: a rhetorical analysis of the rise of austerity economics

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content THE POLITICS OF PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC ECONOMIC ARGUMENTATION:
A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE RISE OF AUSTERITY ECONOMICS

by

Flemming Schneider Rhode

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
SCHOOL OF COMMUNICATION

December 2017

Copyright 2017 Flemming Schneider Rhode

2
Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................p. 5
Chapter One – Introduction ..........................................................................................p. 6
Austerity ............................................................................................................p. 7
Economic Rhetoric and Expert Legitimacy ....................................................p. 12
Public Policy Arguments in Polarized Economic and Political Environments p. 15
Method ..............................................................................................................p. 16
Theoretical framework .....................................................................................p. 20
Précis of chapters ..............................................................................................p. 26
Chapter Two – Economic Arguments in a Polarized Society: The Socio-Historical
Context of Austerity Rhetoric .....................................................................................p. 28
Austerity as Moral Commandment ..................................................................p. 29
Austerity in the Enlightenment .........................................................................p. 31
Austerity as Prerequisite to Capitalist Growth .................................................p. 32
Austerity as Economic Crisis Theory ...............................................................p. 33
Austerity and the Emergence of Neoliberalism................................................p. 37
The 2008 Financial Crisis and its Aftermath ....................................................p. 41
Austerity in Britain ...........................................................................................p. 42
Austerity in Greece ...........................................................................................p. 43
Political and Media Dynamics Enabling Austerity ..........................................p. 46

3
Conclusion ........................................................................................................p. 59
Chapter Three – Formation of Expert Consensus: Technical Arguments on Austerity
Policies ....................................................................................................................... p. 61
The Econoblogosphere and Austerity Argumentation .....................................p. 62
The Path to Prosperity ......................................................................................p. 68
Debt ceiling debate of 2011 ..............................................................................p. 78
Sequestration and the Budget Control Act of 2011 ..........................................p. 84
Conclusion ........................................................................................................p. 88
Chapter Four – A Purifying Drama: Public Deliberation of Austerity Economics ....p. 91
The Path to Prosperity ......................................................................................p. 92
Debt ceiling debate of 2011 ..............................................................................p. 99
Sequestration and the Budget Control Act of 2011 ........................................p. 102
Burkean Dramatism ........................................................................................p. 105
From Order to Disorder: The 2008 Financial Crisis ......................................p. 107
Debt as Guilt ....................................................................................................p 110
Austerity as Victimage ...................................................................................p. 115
Conclusion ......................................................................................................p. 117

4
Chapter Five – Recovery of Expertise: Use and Abuse of Economics in Public
Deliberation...............................................................................................................p. 120
Expertise in Public Austerity Arguments .......................................................p. 121
The Dramatism of Austerity ............................................................................p 126
Democratic Deliberation of Economics in the Age of Manufactured
Controversies ..................................................................................................p. 130
References .................................................................................................................p. 140

5
Acknowledgements

On more than one occasion when telling colleagues the scholars who comprised my
committee I have been met with something approaching shock and awe. I am indeed
fortunate to have had the advice and help from such accomplished researchers. However,
those who only know Randy Lake, Tom Goodnight, and Tom Hollihan through their
writings over the years fail to grasp the true depth of my luck being their student and
advisee. From the moment I arrived at USC and took classes with the scholars who would
be my committee members I have been the fortunate recipient of their generosity of spirit
and time. They all spent considerable time meticulously reading my work and talking
through ideas with me. Each have been and are models to me. Randy Lake is a
tremendously careful reader and at every point in a seminar works to turn student
contributions in more productive directions rather than demonstrate their inadequacies.
Tom Goodnight is a model for his commitment to scholarship and admirable disregard
for academic silos. He reads, from what I can tell, just about everything. I do want to
single out my adviser Tom Hollihan for doing all of the above and then some. Being a
graduate student surrounded by such accomplished colleagues and scholars is a treat, but
can also be intimidating. On occasion I wondered whether this path was right for me.
However, after every meeting with Tom Hollihan, despite, shall we say, my irregular
progress, I left encouraged and heartened that I had good ideas and arguments.

Although they were not part of my dissertation committee, I want to also acknowledge
Ann Crigler and Chris Smith who served on my qualification examination committee for
their advice as my project was in the most nebulous form. Their excellent classes
prompted me to read a lot of work in disciplines that were not familiar to me.

The conclusions of this dissertation are in many ways pessimistic and disheartening. In
this respect, the work of the dissertation mirrors the dreadful political conditions
currently engulfing the country. I stand by this assessment, but the birth of my daughter
Anya has given me a new outlook on life – cynicism will not do. Every day I look at
Anya and I am reminded that a new generation of Americans are being raised and
educated and have the potential make the country and the world a better place.

Finally, I want reserve the last line for my partner Tisha who has supported me
throughout the process emotionally, intellectually, logistically, grammatically and
countless other ways that cannot possibly be enumerated here. I am forever grateful.

6
Chapter One: Introduction
“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when
they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is
ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any
intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in
authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic
scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly
exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas.”
-John Maynard Keynes (1936/1964, p. 383)

The great financial crisis of 2008 and its lingering after-effects prompted both political
and social-scientific arguments concerning the most appropriate, effective, and just fiscal
response by governments. These debates are of keen public and scholarly interest given
that, at this exact moment, economics was subjected to massive public scrutiny. This was
also the moment when the academically discredited school of austerity economics came
to dominate the discussion and guided public policy. This study argues that the
consequences were disastrous, and that the epistemic standards, media practices, and
political incentives shaping the terms of these arguments warrant close scholarly attention
as they structured the future of the global economy. This study examines the emergent
public consensus in the United States outlining a policy of austerity from 2010-2011.
The meltdown of powerful global financial institutions constituted a systemic risk
and necessitated government bailouts. As a result, the credibility of the field of
economics as a social science, in particular among the public, plummeted. Despite
impressive scientific advances in medicine, aerospace engineering, and microelectronics,

7
trust in modern science has declined steadily during the past half century. During this
time, the conception of science advancing through linear progress has given way to one
in which doubt and uncertainty are highlighted with controversies and postmodern
suspicion treating science as one narrative equal among many others (Guachat, 2011;
Lidskog, 1996). Public distrust in economic research is, if anything, even greater;
Sapienza & Zingales (2013) found that people tend to trust their own opinion more if
they are told that economists have reached a consensus opposing it. Public distrust in
economics as a science did not emerge out of thin air. The 2008 crisis was enabled by an
excessive faith in econometric models that underestimated the systemic risks combined
with the emergence of such new financial instruments as credit default swap securities.
1

As a result, public faith in economic expertise is now very low.
The public’s lack of trust in economics as a legitimate social science, based on its
performance in the lead-up to the financial crisis is justified. Yet this public skepticism
about economic theory is unfounded in that mainstream economic theories performed
remarkably well in predicting and explaining the effects of government policies
following the crash and during the gradual economic recovery (Krugman, 2015). The
ability of legislatures to pursue a political agenda at odds with a social-scientific
consensus is an important and complex phenomenon worthy of close rhetorical scrutiny.
Austerity
Austerity derives etymologically derived from the Greek austeros, meaning
“dryness of the tongue,” but this term “acquires different meanings depending on the

1
Other econometric models and economists correctly identified this risk and accordingly predicted the
cause and nature of the 2008 financial crisis; see, e.g., Rajan, 2005.

8
context, from the most ‘rational’ financial analysis to the condemnation of Southern
profligacy” (Alberti & Hollihan, 2014, p. 344; Schui, 2014, p. 11). This study defines
austerity economics and austerity policies as did Florian Schui (2014): “Austerity policies
are proposed to restore balance in government finances and regain economic
dynamism…pursued mainly by cutting back on government expenditure that funds
individual and collective forms of consumption” (p. 2).
Although austerity economics is a recurring public policy strategy, amongst
academic economists it is subject to bipartisan condemnation. N. Gregory Mankiw
(2008), former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President George W.
Bush and adviser to Governor Romney’s presidential campaign observed:
If you were going to turn to only one economist to understand the
problems facing the economy, there is little doubt that the economist
would be John Maynard Keynes. Although Keynes died more than a half-
century ago, his diagnosis of recessions and depressions remains the
foundation of modern macroeconomics.
The level of support in peer-reviewed economic journals for austerity economics is
comparable to that enjoyed by those rejecting, for instance, anthropogenic climate
change. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business completes monthly
surveys of a diverse group of 50 leading economists. When asked in 2012 whether

9
President Obama’s stimulus package reduced unemployment, only two
2
said no
3

(“Economic Stimulus,” 2012). When the survey asked the same question in 2014, that
meager number was halved so that only one person disagreed (“Economic Stimulus
Revisited,” 2014). Furthermore, international economic governing bodies such as the
International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – by no means perceived to
be inimical to conservative economic policy views – have also rejected the premises of
economic austerity explicitly (Praet, 2013; “World Economic Outlook,” 2012). Finally,
economic forecasters in private industry, who rely on the accuracy of their forecasts for a
living, also unanimously agree that the stimulus improved employment through increased
consumption – the antithesis of the theory of austerity (Calmes & Cooper, 2009).
When President Obama was sworn into office, the Democratic Party controlled the
U.S. House of Representatives. In addition, the Democrats held a supermajority in the
Senate for 14 nonconsecutive weeks.
4
During this time, the magnitude of the economic
crisis became clear and the Obama administration implemented a stimulus program
following basic macroeconomic precepts around which there existed an academic

2
And even then, major asterisks must be placed by those two holdouts. As UC Berkeley Professor of
Economics J. Bradford DeLong (2012) writes: “Note that Hoxby appears to be evaluating a different
statement--that the ARRA was worth doing--rather than the question asked--that the ARRA reduced the
unemployment rate in 2010 below what it would otherwise have been. At least, that is how I read her claim
that ‘the depressing effects of future liabilities likely exceed benefits’. And note that Lazear's comments—
‘the estimates [of the Recovery Act's effects] are varied and the highest are based on ex-ante models, not
experience-based data. The upper bound estimate is low’--appear to justify the position that he is uncertain
about the truth of the statement, not that he disagrees with the statement.”
3
Moreover, this is a very generous estimate of support for austerity for a completely different reason: The
question only asked whether the opposite of austerity is wrong, not whether austerity is correct. Believing
President Obama’s stimulus measure did not lower unemployment is a necessary but not sufficient
condition for austerity.
4
Senator Al Franken (D-MN) was sworn into office July 7
th
2009, giving the Democrats 60 votes when
Robert Byrd (D-VW) was available for votes, until Senator Ted Kennedy died on August 25
th
2009. When
Senator Paul Kirk (D-MA) replaced Senator Kennedy on September 25
th
2009 the Democrats had 60 votes
again until January 2010, when Scott Brown (R-MA) was elected.

10
consensus. Although the stimulus program was smaller in scope than warranted by the
recession, it is generally thought to have prevented a global depression while stabilizing
the U.S. employment crisis and the financial system (Grunwald, 2013; Krugman, 2013f).
When the Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives in the 2010
midterm elections, however, they proposed austerity policies. The Republicans were able
to extract significant cuts to discretionary spending on everything from heating assistance
for the poor to embassy security and special education programs in the Budget Control
Act of 2011 in exchange for lifting the debt ceiling (Canfield, 2012; Weismann, 2012).
This enormous political success enjoyed by Republicans campaigning on as well
as enacting austerity policies requires an explanation. Various theoretical approaches
have been taken to explain how it is possible for austerity to ascend to the public policy
agenda despite the absence of social-scientific support. The first explanation centers on
political economy, namely, that influential elites pursuing ideological ends amenable to
austerity successfully pushed for the policies. Mark Thoma (2013) argued that austerity
was merely a means to an ideological end: “In good times or bad, conservatives will find
a way to argue that tax cuts for the wealthy are the key to economic success” (para. 4).
Martin Gilens (2012) studied surveys of different segments of society and found that the
opinions of economic elites matter, while the opinions of poor or middle class Americans
only matter when they agree with political elites, which is to say not at all. Specifically, if
the opinions of all Americans counted equally we would have “more generous
unemployment benefits” – the antithesis of austerity economics. This supports the
political economy explanation but does not account for the more abstract notion of the
necessity for cutting government spending and balancing budgets. Although many elites

11
supported only very specific austerity measures, the need to cut spending in the abstract
was still used to great effect as an electoral cudgel against Democrats in appeals to the
electorate. The question is, why did the electorate support austerity in the abstract?
A second explanation does not so much object to the political economy account,
but considers it insufficient because it does not explain why austerity as a policy
resonates with those who disagree with the goals of neoliberalism and overwhelmingly
support the Great Society projects. Farrell (2013) suggested that austerity ought not to be
understood as a dishonest set of means to enact a politically conservative legislative
agenda, but as an inherently appealing and intuitive idea. Simon Wren-Lewis (2013),
citing Farrell, endorsed this view contending “its [sic] wrong to try and find a motive for
everything in terms of interests groups. Ideas have a power of their own. But for ideas to
have power they need to resonate.” Wren-Lewis claimed that politicians tend to feel
guilty about advocating short-term thinking and producing deficits at the expense of
future generations, and feel like children caught by their parents when the markets punish
them for their bad behavior. The idea is intriguing and possibly accounts for elite support,
but not for popular support for austerity. Intuitively, austerity also has a “common sense”
appeal summed up by Mark Blyth (2013) as: “You cannot cure debt with more debt” (p.
7). However, Blyth did not explain the power of the intuitive appeal: From whence does
it derive and how can it act as the fulcrum for an international movement and withstand
social-scientific consensus? Without discounting the merit of these explanations, the
question of why certain economic arguments work is answered best by a rhetorical
approach to economics.

12
Economic Rhetoric and Expert Legitimacy

Although the rhetorical study of economics has focused on various argument
fields and debates spanning more than three decades, claims of technocratic expertise –
particularly coupled with claims of objectivity – have been a consistent source of critique.
The rhetorical study of economics grows principally out of Deirdre McCloskey’s (1998)
work that originated in the Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry (POROI), in which
scientific rhetoric was analyzed as persuasive argumentation as opposed to objective
findings. Scientific texts were subjected to rhetorical criticisms that read positivist and
modernist ideals of neutrality and objectivity as rhetorically manufactured through jargon
and imposing mathematical models. Projections of economic expertise were, in this light,
at least somewhat deceptive in that they hid the inherent subjectivity of the practice of
economic research in the cloak of an arhetorical rhetoric, obscuring crucial
methodological choices, judgments, and assumptions. Economic research is thus not the
objective delivery of scientific facts concerning the behavior of human economic actors.
McCloskey, in the tradition of POROI, focused more on the internal academic
conversations in the field of economics than on the ways in which economic theories
were used or taken as evidence in the public sphere. James Arnt Aune (2000) frames this
as a major oversight, but extends McCloskey’s arguments concerning the rhetorical
nature of economic arguments in his critical analysis of the persuasive dynamics of free
market rhetoric. The academic conversations were of minor importance to Aune, who
urged that the focus should be policy, not epistemology. Aune also criticized McCloskey
because her edited collection Second Thoughts: Myths and Morals in U.S. Economic
History (1993) allegedly was funded by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-

13
tank. Aune argued that the think-tank authors relied on statistics and market-based
analysis
5
, which – while entirely conventional in the discipline – was sufficient to earn
Aune’s skepticism. However, a central point of Aune’s work was to establish and critique
the rhetoricity of public economic arguments. Aune’s (2000) approach attempted to peel
away the authority of economists, which he argued was constructed via a realist style of
rhetoric, the “default rhetoric...for defenders of the free market” (pp. 40, 46). In Aune’s
view, the realist style of rhetoric is deplorable not only because of the ideological
commitments it serves but also because it obstructs properly democratic deliberations on
the economy by asserting facts and leaving little room for value-based argumentation.
Robert Asen (2009) similarly expressed concern about the influence of
technocratic expertise driving economic public policy debates concerning social security.
Asen concedes that there are empirical, factual concerns, such as “the percentage of
workers whose income exceeds the cap on payroll taxes” (p. 235), but sidesteps these
concerns on the grounds that they “do not constitute the heart of the debates” (pp. 235-
236). While there is no reason to dispute Asen’s characterization of the Social Security
debates as properly being about public values of solidarity and shared social protections
achieved through citizen contributions, this begs the question of whether the concern
about technocratic expertise is justified in public debates that do turn on factual
questions. Supply-side economics, for instance, has gained public currency by claiming
that cuts to the marginal tax rates are socially beneficial because they produce even more

5
However, if the funders of the collection were expecting an indictment against government spending on
the poor and pacifism they may have misjudged McCloskey’s politics and ideological commitments: The
book includes strong arguments for the benefits of public education spending on excluded minority
populations and of free immigration while highlighting the immense costs of military commitments and the
war on drugs. For further discussion, see Ziliak (2003).

14
tax revenue, although this claim is not even remotely supported by the best available
evidence. To be clear, the issue even in such a debate is not whether public policy
operates – or should operate – outside the realms of normative value propositions, but
whether value-based public policy choices are contingent on some level of factual
matters. In this case, what is the space for technocratic expertise when such issues do
become the “heart of the debate”?
The 2008 financial crisis provided new material for criticism of the practice of
economic research and its public utility. Hingstman & Goodnight (2011) read a public
exchange of letters in 1932 between Friedrich von Hayek and John Maynard Keynes in
the context of contemporary economic debates concerning how “different groups engage
in appropriation or critique of those theories to gain argumentative standing and to strive
for advantage” (p. 3). This reading finds that contemporary public policy advocates
distort the theories of older economists while simultaneously laying claim to their
prestige.
6
The authors show that Keynes and Hayek, who in the contemporary distorted
view are diametrically opposed, are both skeptical of economic austerity, an agreement
that is “potentially devastating to contemporary proposals to cut government budgets by
more than 50% in the interest of paying off national debts” (Hingstman & Goodnight, p.
19). This analysis opens for the emancipatory potential of technical economic
argumentation in public deliberations complementing Asen’s concerns that the technical
nature of these arguments subordinate citizenship and public values to expertise by
discouraging public participation and obscuring moral issues (pp. 241, 245). The other
line of inquiry opened by this analysis concerns how expert consensus among economists

6
The distortion seems, however, primarily to be of Hayek; contemporary Keynesians would readily admit
to, e.g., institutional constraints.

15
becomes distorted in public as advocates appropriate research and mold it for their
political purposes, creating the artifice of controversy in the technical field.
The similarities between Hayek’s and Keynes’ rhetorical commonplaces as well as
their agreement concerning key policy concerns enabled Hanan and Chaput (2013) to
argue that the public deliberations concerning stimulus policies are fundamentally a sham
because they “merely reflect two different instantiations of today's dominant cartography
of power” (p. 19). For Hanan and Chaput, mainstream technical arguments about the best
ways to alleviate poverty are undemocratic because they preclude genuine reflections
about capitalism per se and thus reify neoliberalism. Moreover, the technical arguments
are undemocratic because they are a ruse: The distinctions between the economic policies
offered by President George W. Bush and critics such as Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz are
“artificial” (p. 27) and reflect “mere partisan politics” (p. 31) in the sense that that the
same policy ends are pursued by different parties. Such a conception of economic
expertise is somewhat consistent with Plumpe’s (2012) view that economic experts are
intellectual foot soldiers for differing political coalitions, never changing their
fundamental assumptions but waiting for an economic crisis to invalidate their
opponents’ legitimacy. In this sense, the differences in policy implications are real, but
the normative contributions of expertise to public debate are indeed artificial: Arguments
are never falsified, but only fall out of vogue, to be dusted off and recycled later.

Public Policy Arguments in Polarized Economic and Political Environments

Public arguments concerning public policy must be read in the context of a highly
polarized political media environment and partisan political system. This increasing
distance between the ideology of the political parties is the defining development in

16
political media environments in the past two decades. While locating the original sin of
the increasing polarization in American politics lies outside the scope of this study,
multiple factors, including the emergence of cable news and new media outlets, the
increased capacity for audience segmentation, data analytics that make it cheaper to turn
out base voters than persuade independent voters, securely gerrymandered congressional
districts, the associated increased importance of primary elections, and geographic and
social sorting (Democrats only marrying and living next to Democrats and so on) all have
increased the political and commercial profitability of political polarization.
7
This
polarization is reflected in political partisanship among the U.S. electorate, elected
representatives, and news media outlets, and, from a rhetorical perspective, created an
argumentative feedback loop in which each factor incentivizes a more polarized form of
political argumentation, which in turn legitimizes and perhaps even necessitates a
correspondingly polarized argument.
Method
The principal method employed for this study is rhetorical criticism. The rhetorical
critic evaluates discourses in highly contextual terms in order not just to elicit theoretical
understanding but also proffer normative critique. Rhetorical practice, which for present
purposes is defined simply as the suasory use of symbols, sets debate norms and agendas
and, by so doing, constitutes and reproduces citizenship as well as society (Asen, 2004).
Tied to its ancient Greek origin, rhetoric is intimately related to the polis and features
practical critique of the reasoning and judgments that form public life. Public policy

7
See, e.g., Bishop (2008). A comprehensive analysis of the polarization literature, media norms, and their
connection to the austerity debate is presented in Chapter 2.

17
debates are thus appropriate for rhetorical criticism by considering both stylistic tokens
and concrete propositions to produce legitimacy and expertise through symbolic action.
From a dramatistic perspective, which views rhetoric as symbolic action, the
policies that are fodder for public debate also express a nation’s values, direct and deflect
attention, cultivate attitudes, induce cooperation, and motivate action (Burke, 1969, p. 43,
1973, p. 8; see also Asen, 2009, p. 8). Public arguments can be seen as a type of courtship
that invites audiences to participate in enactments of worldviews that speaks to existing
social realities and modes of identification. Given that people are perfectly capable of
rejecting information, frames, and narratives, this view of persuasion is preferable to the
coercive one, often known as the “hypodermic needle” model of influence.
Further, more than just appealing to attitudinal predispositions, policy debates enact
and enforce symbolic hierarchies that unite and divide (Asen, 2009). Upholding and
changing symbolic hierarchies are accomplished, in part, through word choices that both
direct and deflect attention by linguistic means. Asen (2009) examined two competing
frames in the social security debates: social security as insurance and as investment.
Different terms featured different considerations and social values, and favored the status
quo or President George W. Bush’s proposed changes, respectively. Suttles (2010) found
more abstract metaphors in media portrayals of the economy amidst financial crises, as
either, naturalistically, the inevitable changing of the seasons or, mechanically, a machine
in disrepair. Both studies analyzed the public policy arguments by identifying their key
metaphors.
A specific dramatistic method for analyzing mass media is the representative
anecdote (Brummett, 1984a.) According to Kenneth Burke, the representative anecdote is

18
the distilled essence of a discourse in narrative form, which recurs in society because it
provides people with symbolic equipment for living (1941/1967). The anecdote is not
necessarily explicit in the discourses that circulate themselves, but can be teased out of
the content and vocabulary of the texts examined. The critic’s job, then, is to identify:
“the modes of discourse enjoying currency in a society and to link discourse to the real
situations for which it is symbolic equipment” (Brummett, 1984a, p. 161). The
quintessential example of a representative anecdote related to public policy is the story of
the Cadillac-driving welfare queen. President Ronald Reagan made use of this trope “at
virtually every campaign stop” in his Republican primary campaign in 1976 (Blake,
2012, para. 14). The example functions as a representative anecdote because it so
efficiently captures in narrative expression the essence of Republican policies,
assumptions, attitudes, and rhetoric towards welfare. The case of the Cadillac-driving
welfare queen as a representative anecdote is also instructive in a second aspect: While it
is representative of Republican welfare discourse it is not representative of the reality or
lived experience of welfare recipients. Therefore, just because people use representative
anecdotes to deal with their anxieties concerning real problems does not make them
automatically useful or beneficial: Representative anecdotes may lead to “trained
incapacities” (1935/1954, pp. 7-9, 48-49) in which the symbolic appetites created and
satisfied lead to socially harmful orientations. The critic, then, also must evaluate
equipment’s utility for living, not just in relieving social anxieties but also in inculcating
productive attitudes that address the material problems from which they derive.
A study of the representative anecdotes affords an advantage over the explicit
terms, frames, and metaphors recurring in the public policy debates in that it more that

19
directly enables a moralized framework for understanding the dramatistic implications of
the recurring rhetorical patterns in question. That is, however much Paul Krugman (2010)
wishes it were not, the invocation of economic theories in the drama of the public policy
realm often functions as “a morality play…in which virtue is rewarded and vice
punished” (para. 3). An appropriate tool for analyzing the morality play of economics is
dramatism, which emphasizes the moral purpose behind symbolic actions and is
particularly well-suited to examining dispassionate public policy analysis as a morality
play. Central to all morality plays is the imperative to uphold or renew a social hierarchy.
Burke’s Cycle of Terms for Order, which moves from Guilt, through Victimage to
Redemption is dramatism’s account of this hierarchical imperative. Thus, while
Krugman’s dismissal of economics as moral argument is good economics, it is terrible
dramatism. A Burkean dramatistic analysis will reveal what kind of morality play
economic austerity is, the reasons why the play unfolds as it does, and the reasons why it
has accrued such considerable and persistent assent, even from those who stand to lose
financially. The representative anecdote and Burke’s Cycle of Terms for Order work in
conjunction with each other to identify the underlying moralistic essence of the
representative anecdote and to explain how it reconstitutes order. In short, this project
employs Burke’s dramatistic cycle as a rhetorical pattern with which to analyze austerity
policies.
Moreover, my approach to rhetorical study of public policy debates takes to heart
Robert Asen’s (2010) injunction that “no single participant can direct the course of a
policy debate; instead, trajectories emerge as collective achievement” (p. 133). For this
reason, the political-economic explanations for the emergence of austerity economics,

20
which posit that elite, right-wing elements coopted public debate, cannot account for the
public’s widespread participation in the debate or their passionate assent to the outcome.
However, the way in which economics was warped in the transition from the technical to
the public sphere is certainly the political right’s deliberate collective achievement.
Furthermore, consistent with the representative anecdote approach, I adopt Asen’s
(2010) use of both macro- and micro-analyses to study public policy debates: “At the
macro level, the statements of individuals may be mixed and matched to reconstruct
larger themes…At the micro level, particular exchanges obtain significance for both their
representativeness and their exceptionalism” (p. 134). The macro-level fragmentary
approach will assemble general conservative statements on the U.S. debt and deficit, the
debt ceiling of 2011, and its associated sequestration and Budget Control Act of 2011 in a
dramatistic reading of the meaning of debt. In order to ensure the representativeness, I
attend to the defense of austerity policies by the key legislative and executive actors. At
the micro level, the talking points introduced at the Sunday morning political exemplify
the defense of austerity.
Theoretical Framework
Of particular use to this project is one of the more recent theoretical approaches to
examine scientific controversy research termed manufactured controversy. Substantively
research from this perspective usually attempts to recover scientific expertise and defend
orthodox science in public arguments against disingenuous advocates. Conceptually, a
manufactured controversy consists of two components – a consensus in the scientific

21
community has been achieved
8
and disingenuous rhetors in the public sphere deceptively
claim the scientific community is divided over this question. Manufactured controversy
thus considers the rhetorical process by which a scientific consensus is rendered
controversial in the public sphere through falsely representing the scientific community
itself as divided over the issue, rather than dispute the validity of the arguments behind
the consensus or the capacity for scientific argumentation to inform public affairs.
Ceccarelli (2011) refers to evidence of this deliberate deceptive tactic of foisting an
inaccurate impression of the status of the issue within the technical sphere upon a
susceptible public as a “smoking gun,” the prime example of which is a memo by Frank
Luntz to create an impression among the public that he himself acknowledged was “in the
face of prevailing wisdom” (in Ceccarelli, 2011, p. 205).
No such memo exists for austerity economics to complement evidence of
scientific consensus, but as Ceccarelli does in her analysis of Thabo Mbeki’s reversal of
his acceptance of the link between HIV and AIDS, I infer from the coinciding timing of
Republican’s rejection, acceptance and rejection once again of austerity with their own
control of government that support for austerity economics is disingenuous. After the
attacks of 9/11 and a stock market crash following a burst Internet technology bubble the
U.S. economy was in recession. As a solution President Bush proposed deficit spending
through an economic stimulus measure, which Rep. Ryan repeatedly supported publicly
in great detail. In an interview Rep. Ryan stated, “You have to spend a little to grow a

8
I want to note here that scientific consensus certainly is not a guarantor of truth or accuracy, nor even if it
is should a small group of experts dictate answers to questions of public concern. While I am personally
convinced of the accuracy consensus rejection of austerity economics, if I were wrong this would not
fundamentally change the argument presented in this project – that the process by which social-scientific
consensus is rendered controversial in the public sphere is deeply troubling.

22
little. What we're trying to do is stimulate that part of the economy that's on its back”
(Wicklund, 2002) and defended deficit spending in a fiscal crisis on the floor of the U.S.
House of Representatives:
The things we’re trying to pass in this bill are the time-tested,
proven, bipartisan solutions to get businesses to stop laying off
people, to hire people back, and to help those people who have lost
their jobs. . . .We’ve got to get the engine of economic growth
growing again because we now know, because of recession, we
don’t have the revenues that we wanted to, we don’t have the
revenues we need (Grim, 2012).
Of course, this does not preclude a sincere, and astoundingly complete, change of heart a
decade later. However, Rep. Ryan voted for President Bush’s stimulus measure ESA in
2008, along with 85% of his Republican colleagues one year before he opposed President
Obama’s stimulus spending on the grounds that it constituted “sugar-high economics”
(Garofolo, 2011). The important thing to note is that the change was not merely a
rhetorical sleight of hand, Paul Ryan did not just defend explicitly anti-austerity policies
he went to great lengths to defend the basic Keynesian intellectual framework behind
them. In congressional testimony Rep. Ryan agrees with Kevin Hassett, an economist
from the conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute, that fiscal stimulus in
response to a recession works and the only problem is that the measures are usually too
small (Chait, 2011). Finally, Congressman Ryan voted for the TARP bailout, authorizing
expenditures of over $700 bn. three months before rejecting President Obama’s $878 bn.

23
stimulus package stating: “This is not a crisis we can spend and borrow our way out of—
that is how we got here in the first place” (Bender & MacQaurrie, 2012).
With the advent of the new Trump administration Republican support for
austerity economics has once again dissipated. The last Republican budget of the 114
th

Congress created a point of order against raising deficits. The new Republican budget
waives it:

EXCEPTIONS FROM CERTAIN PROVISIONS.—Section 404(a) of S.
Con. Res. 13 (111th Congress), the concurrent resolution on the budget for
fiscal year 2010, and section 3101 of S. Con. Res. 11 (114th Congress),
the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2016,
shall not apply to legislation for which the Chairman of the Committee on
the Budget of the applicable House has exercised the authority under
subsection (a). (budget.senate.gov, n.d., “Sec. 3002. Reserve Fund”)
The waiver of the new budget was necessary since the new Republican budget increases
the public debt from $20 trillion to $29 trillion by 2026 (budget.senate.gov, n.d., Title 1 –
Recommended Levels). Nor is this reversal limited to the U.S. Senate:

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy told reporters today he still
“cares” about the debt, but has realized that economic growth is a priority
that will help resolve it — a realization that somehow dawned in the
immediate aftermath of the election after eluding him throughout Obama’s
two terms. (Chait, 2016, para. 5).

24
Similarly, the Chief Economist at Pangea Market Advisory Steven Blitz asserted that
unified Republican control of the federal government changed his projections from
continued austerity to massive deficit financed government spending: “Now that
Republicans are in control, there’s no concern about debt and deficits,” (Zumbrun, 2013,
para. 5). In a thorough essay in the Washington Post Kelsey Snell and David Weigel
(2017) asked the infamously fiscally conservative Freedom Caucus about voting for a
budget that not only was not balanced but increased the public debt by trillions and
received a “collective shrug.”
The two main components of a manufactured controversy – a scientific consensus
and the disingenuous misrepresentation of the status of scientific consensus are thus
present in the case of manufactured controversy. In one important respect, this case
differs from the existing literature which focuses exclusively on the hard sciences such as
geology, virology and climatology (Banning, 2009; Ceccarelli, 2011; Mitchell & Lyne,
2015; Paliewicz, 2012). This move to intervene in public arguments on behalf of
mainstream scientific rhetors runs counter to decades of research that questioned the
epistemic value of scientific research. This change in research trajectory has been
prompted by the cynical deployment of scientifically discredited arguments by corporate
and political actors to stir doubt in the public mind over settled scientific issues of public
concern. However, it is not only the hard sciences which are in a legitimacy crisis and
whose consensus is not reflected in the public sphere. The transition from the hard
sciences to social science does make for a more difficult case as theories and
measurements of human behavior are more indirect and speculative than those of carbon
dating, HIV/AIDS and ice sheets. Whereas the natural sciences can and do perform much

25
of their research on inanimate objects in the controlled environments of laboratory
experiments, social scientists must make predictions about human behavior based on self-
reported survey data and assumptions about human nature in historically and culturally
contingent environments. Nevertheless, because crucial questions of income distribution,
political power and poverty alleviation turn on economic theories and research, the
prevalence of manufactured pseudo-scientific controversies is not an insignificant gap in
this literature. Moreover, the manufactured controversy literature treats conservative
political use of pseudo-science as a given, whereas this study seeks to contextualize
conservative arguments concerning social science in the political realities of a new media
landscape dominated by echo-chamber effects, the permanent campaign phenomenon and
a historically polarized electorate dispersed in uncompetitive and gerrymandered
congressional districts. As in the foundational research on manufactured controversy, the
rhetorical theoretical approach I take is pedagogical in nature and summarized by Barry
Brummett (1984b) “identify some rhetorical tactic, strategy, device, etc., and attempt to
account for its effectiveness” rather than to explore “epistemological, ontological,
axiological and ethical dimensions of communication” (p. 107).
Given the documented controversies over the political deployment of economic
research, the following chapters will examine a mix of social-scientific and popular news
accounts of the rise of austerity economics. Specifically, the examination will be limited
to the five-month period from April to August of 2011 following the inauguration of the
112
th
United States Congress and the unveiling of multiple austerity projects. During this
period concurrent – but substantively distinct – arguments occurred in the technical
sphere over the 2011 Paul Ryan budget titled Path to Prosperity, debt default prospects

26
and budgetary sequester. These distinct arguments and relevant source materials will be
treated in separate chapters outlined below. The source materials for the arguments aimed
at the public sphere will include public speeches by political actors, mainstream news
media accounts and professional polling to estimate public opinion. The source materials
for the arguments aimed at the technical sphere will include congressional testimony by
economists, new media blog entries by reputable and professional economists and
surveys of leading economists’ views on the specific arguments.
There are three central research questions that this study will tackle:
(1) How have new developments in media ecologies and the emergence of deepening
political polarization shaped the austerity debates?
(2) How is the nature and role of economic expertise modified in the arguments over
austerity economics in the transition from the technical to the public sphere?
(3) How do arguments for austerity economics function dramatistically? How do they
reinforce and purify symbolic hierarchies?
Précis of Chapters
Chapter Two (Economic Arguments in a Polarized Society: The Socio-Historical
Context of Austerity Rhetoric) will look at the socio-political context of austerity
arguments. Specifically, the chapter will argue that contemporary political and media
dynamics structure austerity arguments by incentivizing and enabling a mode of public
discourse that amplifies existing attitudes, misinforms the public, and emphasizes
partisan divides and legislative gridlock.

27
Chapter Three (Formation of Expert Consensus: Technical Arguments on Austerity
Policies) will examine how professional economists evaluated and debated the merits of
austerity economics by attending to arguments on the “econoblogosphere,” which run
concurrently with public policy deliberations as opposed to finalized peer-reviewed
publications which usually run one or two years behind legislative votes.
Chapter Four (A Purifying Drama: Public Deliberation of Austerity Economics)
will look at how the same set of austerity policies examined in the previous chapter were
debated in the public. Moreover, the chapter will analyze how the public arguments on
austerity function dramatistically by enacting a moralized symbolic hierarchy through a
deceptive rendering of factual claims. The arguments examined will be from a sample of
the current of conservative political legislation.
Finally, Chapter Five (Recovery of Expertise: Use and Abuse of Economics in
Public Deliberation) will draw from the case studies and conclude how expertise shaped
the public debate on austerity and apply the lessons learned to theories of rhetoric of
science and economic rhetoric. The goal of this chapter – and this entire study – is to
develop a more nuanced understanding of the role for academic economic research in
public policy debates, and drawing from those conclusions, consider possibilities for
effective critiques dishonest public arguments and potential for productive interventions
in public arguments by experts. My goal is to provide economists and other public
intellectuals with the necessary rhetorical tools to navigate a politicized media
environment to disabuse the public of manufactured controversies and reshape national
debates in productive directions.

28
Chapter Two: Economic Arguments in a Polarized Society:
The Socio-Historical Context of Austerity Rhetoric

This chapter argues that the legitimation of austerity economics as a public
controversy is enabled by an incentive structure that rewards unconditional obstruction
and punishes collaboration. Furthermore, the chapter will argue that political partisans
have intentionally provoked a legitimation crisis in order to mobilize their most
ideologically committed followers and to change social welfare policies. The chapter
begins by describing the socio-historical context of contemporary austerity arguments in
the U.S. by tracing how austerity has previously been defined and defended throughout
various historic economic crises, as well as how the defense of austerity has shifted from
forensic to epideictic grounds in response to the intellectual ebb and flow of its empirical
status. Further, I analyze how the polarized political structure and media dynamics create
the fertile conditions for austerity as a manufactured controversy to be used as a political
tactic. Existing and emerging media norms that privilege coverage negative in tone,
alarming events speaking to ideological preferences of the audience all insulate those
who defend austerity from political backlash.
While a comprehensive review of austerity economics is beyond the scope of this
project, the history of its application is central to the socio-historical context of
contemporary debates concerning austerity in the United States. As will become clear, the
uses of austerity as a representational resource vary across time, historical and cultural
localities, political systems and social-scientific understandings. The rhetorical
justifications for austerity in the United Kingdom may thus not apply to the United States

29
and vice versa. Nevertheless, the re-emergence of austerity economics after the 2008
financial crisis was not isolated to the United States. On the contrary the simultaneous
reach of austerity across most Western economies suggests the possibility of topoi
working across varied rhetorical contexts, eras and economic conditions.

The Origins of Austerity as Moral Commandment
Austerity as a moral commandment and philosophy long predates any notion of
national economic policy, of the term “economy” as a noun, of capitalism or even of the
nation state. Economic historian Florian Schui (2014) in his work on the history of
austerity traces the concept to the ancient Greek austeros or dryness of the tongue, and
although Aristotle personally did not suffer from want he warned about excessive bodily
pleasures, specifically the “touch and taste” sensations from consumption in the Ethics
(Aristotle transl. 2009 by W. D. Ross, III, 10; Schui, 2014, p. 11-16). Austerity through
temperance thus originates as a form of virtue through ascetic self-denial contrasted with
the sins of hedonic indulgence and consumption. The reasoning behind austerity as a
prerequisite to the good life is that worldly focus obscures focus on love of learning, truth
and justice. Austerity was thus not considered virtuous of its own right but for its role in
leading a balanced life prioritizing the divine ideals.
This approach to consumption has to be understood in the context of ancient
Greece being a zero-growth economy as opposed to modern growth economies based on
productivity increases. For this reason, notions of austerity adversely affecting growth
simply did not apply. In this sense, austerity for Aristotle was not economic in the sense
of how individual choices have wider social ramifications – second order consumption

30
effects simply were not considered: “Nowhere does he [Aristotle] examine what the
consequences of changes in the level of consumption of one person would be for that of
other individuals…or how a more efficient use of resources might allow an increased
level of consumption” (Schui, p. 22).
Self-denial as moral virtue was a concept extended by early Christian philosophy
since wealth and luxuries were considered obstacles to “storing up wealth in heaven”
(Matthew 6:19). Another Biblical passage declared that it was “easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven” (Mark
10:25). Concurrent with economies starting to produce consistent growth the Christian
position on wealth and austerity softened in two respects. St. Thomas Aquinas argued
that lives of austerity only applied to those “seeking perfection, mainly professional
Christians such as nuns, monks and priests. Ordinary believers, striving for mere
salvation rather than perfection, could content themselves with less ambitious standards.
In particular, a life in poverty was not required” (Schui, p. 27).
The second aspect in which the Catholic Church teachings adapted to new
economic realities pertains to the ethics of wealth acquisition through lending and
finance. As the Catholic Church came to dominate life in Europe from around 1050-1300
agricultural output increased enough that commerce – and thus finance – became an ever
more important facet of life. Jerry Muller (2002) describes this paradox as: “A mortal sin
of theology became a mortal necessity of commercial life” (p. 11.). By the 12
th
century
the problem was resolved (at least partially) by having Jews not subject to canon law do
the lending implicitly supported by the Church. The rhetorical process by which modern

31
inversion of the debtor as the moral sinner came about is a problem worthy of separate
study and well outside the scope of the present efforts.
Subsequent prominent Christian thinkers like Martin Luther also espoused a
theological vision that casuistically stretched famous and radical early Christian texts
such as the Sermon on the Mount to accommodate the political and social realities of rich
states and landlords wishing to preserve their status (Schui, pp. 28-29). Austerity was
thus still a noble endeavor, but not required of all.

Austerity in the Enlightenment
As availability of affordable luxury goods such as tea and coffee proliferated due
to new trade routes and technological innovation so did the incentives to reconsider the
status of luxury consumption as sin. Bernard Mandleville’s (1723/1989) The Fable of the
Bees presents a precursor to modern Keynesian economics. Rather than argue for the
morality of luxury goods themselves, Mandleville argues that private vices produce
public benefits: “Luxury employed a million of the poor/And odious pride a million
more. Envy itself and vanity; Were ministers of industry; Their darling folly, fickleness,
In diet furniture and dress/ That strange ridiculous vice, was made/The very wheel that
turned the trade” (p. 69). In Mandleville’s metaphor, it was possible to have a stable and
prosperous society of bees without the virtue of austerity. In fact, when austerity was
introduced to the beehive, the merchants providing luxury goods could no longer afford
their own necessities, which in turn produced poverty. In a Keynesian view, this is a
classic case of demand deficiency producing poverty. Mandleville’s contribution to the
debate about austerity was significant in several ways. First, it shifted the unit of the

32
analysis from the individual to society as a whole. Second, it linked consumption to
economic progress as a whole. The fact that this was such an important turning point in
the debate over austerity can be seen from the next generation of its defenders.

Austerity as Prerequisite to Capitalist Growth
The next generation of austerity defenses were not based on moral judgments over
individuals consuming or theological concerns. On the contrary, Adam Smith
(1776/2003) argued that austerity could deliver more consumption in the future by
encouraging people to save and invest their capital in the present. Smith claimed that
since people parted with their monies either through “present enjoyment” or “future
profit” it was the denial of present enjoyment which provided the basis for the capital
accumulation that spurred investment and the resulting technological innovations (p.
253). The virtues of austerity for Smith scaled up to the national level where he viewed
with suspicion government debts and financing frivolous spending: “the parsimony which
leads to accumulation has become almost as rare in republican (merchant-run) as
monarchial governments…[leading to] enormous debts which at present oppress, and will
in the long run probably ruin, all the great states of Europe” (pp. 576, 579).
With the advent of economics as a field of study arguments for austerity made the
transition from moral disapprobation of individual consumption to a scientific theory
about social economic progress based on both individual behavior and government
policy. For Smith austerity as a form of public policy was a way to avert the ruins of
default, interest payments and hyperinflation resulting from runaway government debt.
Whereas Adam Smith was chiefly concerned with how capital was accumulated, it was

33
Max Weber’s (1905/2013) treatise The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism that focused on why it was accumulated. Weber’s explanatory model focused
specifically on a particular version of Calvinism and contrasted it with Catholicism and
argued that “elective affinities” existed between Protestantism and capitalism, because of
the austere lives led by Protestants who saved their capital rather than spending it on
earthly pleasures. Specifically, “clad in frugal black the prosperous citizens of Calvin’s
Geneva accumulated rich savings, which they invested in watch manufacturing and other
trades that they pursued with the divinely ordained discipline” (Schui, p. 56). While not
the focus of either work, the moral implications clearly suggest that prosperity comes
from those who choose to forego indulgent spending and thus is a result of individual
moral choices.

Austerity as Economic Crisis Theory
The devastation following the First World War on the European continent
produced widespread economic depression, high government debts from financing the
war, as well as high rates of inflation: “In 1920, consumer prices in Britain were almost
two and a half times what they had been in 1914. In France, prices were nearly four times
the pre-war level… German prices had increased ten-fold compared to 1914.” (Schui, p.
69). The British approach to solving the economic crisis relied on a return to the Gold
Standard and price reduction levels achieved through austerity for workers. Prime
Minister Stanley Baldwin at the time said that: “all the workers of this country have got
to take reductions in wages to help put industry on its feet” (Eichengreen and Temin,
2010, p. 376). The Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Winston Churchill, despite strong

34
recommendations to the contrary both publicly and privately by John Maynard Keynes,
implemented the return to the Gold Standard in 1925 and in his announcement declared
that “no responsible authority has advocated any other policy” (Churchill, 1925, para 1).
No further arguments or reasons were offered beyond the consensus of orthodox
economists – doing otherwise would raise interest rates and crowd out private productive
investment. The ensuing consequences, especially on the coal industry were so severe
that Churchill later called it the “greatest mistake of his life” (Heffer, 2015, para 18). The
adverse effects of austerity to British industry, employment and monetary stability were
reversed when Britain changed course, went off the gold standard and the resulting
increased real wages marked “the beginning of a sustained period of strong economic
growth” (Schui, p. 75). Arguments for austerity in Britain during this time were explicitly
presented as instrumental and scientific claiming the economic suffering of wage earners
as a necessity for long-term prosperity conditioned by the specific contextual aspect of
inflation and depression.
Concurrent with Britain’s economic travails the German Weimar Republic
suffered enormous economic disruption from the Great Depression subsequent to the
early experiences with hyperinflation from 1922-1923 where the mark-dollar exchange
rate rose from 4.21 to 4.2 trillion (“Germany’s hyperinflation-phobia.” 2013). Though
often mythologized as giving rise to Nazism, the early hyperinflation of the Weimar did
not result in political power flowing to the Nazi Party – they won only: “32 Reichstag
seats in the election of May 1924, and just 12 in 1928” (“Germany’s hyperinflation-
phobia.” 2013, para. 7). Rather, it was Chancellor Heinrich Brüning’s austerity and
deflation in the middle of the Great Depression which precipitated the financial ruin

35
which finally saw the Nazi Party rise to political power in Germany. At the time Joseph
Schumpeter heavily influenced Brüning who: “recommended deflationary policies that
very closely resembled the programmes enacted by Brüning” (Schui, p. 79). Specifically,
in an effort to reduce price levels an emergency decree was issued in 1931 to reduce
wages to 1927 levels. According to Schumpeter’s theory this would force a higher
savings rate and thus a higher level of capital accumulation. In reality, the austerity and
resulting deflation resulted in devastating unemployment, which did contribute to the rise
of Nazism (Taylor, 2013; Weisenthal, 2011). At the exact same time Britain was
reversing course in 1931 and started to inflate the economy, Germany’s deflation was
taking hold resulting in an unemployment rate of 33% which Dylan Grice estimates
would have been halved if Brüning had followed Britain’s example (Weisenthal, 2011).
In the U.S. where the Great Depression started, austerity was also the first public
policy tool put to use. President Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon
was emphatic: “Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real
estate…it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living
will come down” (Hoover, 1952, p. 30). Austerity in the form of deflated wages and
living standards were seen as both necessary and inevitable parts of the business cycle
that compensated for excesses in the boom times. The business cycle of booms and
recessions were perceived as inherent to capitalism, and the growth and boom of
capitalism could not be achieved without the purgatory function of austerity cleaning up
the excesses from the boom periods. Economic progress happened “because of these
failures, not despite them” (Blyth, p. 91). Recovery from recessions was determined by
the investors, and the role of government was to encourage business confidence and trust

36
which was best achieved by: “balancing the budget, even raising taxes in a recession if
this was deemed necessary” (Blyth, p. 92). The mechanism by which austerity worked
was thus explicitly rhetorical since austerity was the means through which trust and
confidence in the government is restored by its willingness to inflict the necessary pain.
The rhetorical aspect of austerity as crisis strategy also removes the theory from the realm
of numerical falsifiability and abstract modeling – trust, credibility and confidence are all
hard to measure and ill-defined concepts which can fill the gaps of models positing
austerity theory is flawed. President Hoover considered the importance of the balanced
budget in 1932: “the very keystone of recovery…without it the depression will be
prolonged indefinitely” (Slichter, 1932, para. 1).
Following the turn away from austerity towards deficit spending forced by
military outlays associated with World War II, John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory
had seemingly been vindicated and austerity economics as a theory was losing prestige
within the field of economics. However, prominent advocates of austerity did not
surrender and instead changed the terms of the debate on austerity both by widening the
space of time needed for self-correction and by shifting the defense of austerity from
factual questions of effect to normative questions of non-intervention as an end in itself.
Schumpeter’s (1942/2008) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy does not engage with
what had become the consensus position against austerity – that aggregating individual
virtues of non-consumption leads to a tragedy of the commons – but instead “retreated
into moral commentary and fin-de-siecle moral certitude” (Blyth, p. 97). Schumpeter
laments the change in business structure as small entrepreneurs and innovators are
replaced with larger oligopolies institutionalizing business management. Curiously

37
however, Schumpeter (1942/2008) concedes that material growth and consumption may
result from this new structure of profit through shareholder ownership and government
intervention during crises, but considers the nature of this profit inferior on the grounds
that it is “depersonalized and automatized” (p. 133). What is lost for Schumpeter is the
ethos of rugged individualism thriving during the disorder of economic downturns, but
the newfound stable economic management by the state also “invites jealousy from the
lower orders who…have become accustomed to ever rising standards of living and can
no longer accept dislocations of the market” (Blyth, p. 98). Curiously, for Schumpeter the
economic dislocation of austerity is the vehicle by which the existing social order is
preserved. In Schumpeter’s view, the threat of Keynesianism is not economic
deprivation, but rather that it can deliver the stable economic growth that would
precipitate growing economic and political powers of the “lower orders.”

Austerity and the Emergence of Neoliberalism
Subsequent to World War II Western economies enjoyed rapid and sustained
economic growth guided by Keynesian economic doctrine which came by way of
necessity during the war. During World War II Keynesian dominance over the field of
economics was total and those who argued for the theories of austerity were pushed to the
margins. However, “the dominance of Keynesian economics began to crumble when,
from the early 1970s, Western economies experienced slow growth, increasing
unemployment and inflation” (Schui, p. 114). Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and
President Ronald Reagan, the new generation of conservative political leaders emerging
out of 1970s, faced a government budget that had grown rapidly as a share of the

38
economy even as it fell after the Second World War. The government had assumed new
responsibilities and government spending had grown to be an increasingly important
sector of the economy.
For both Prime Minister Thatcher and President Reagan the primary economic
intellectual influence was Friedrich von Hayek.
9
Though writing his most influential
works in the 1930’s and 1940’s Hayek’s moment of influence came in the 1970’s as
austerity made a comeback during another economic crisis. What separates Hayek’s
arguments in favor of austerity from the previous iteration (save Schumpeter’s last
defense of austerity) is that they are not chiefly about economic efficiency, but rather
liberty. As John Maynard Keynes was winning the intellectual battle against austerity in
the mid-1930’s and Hayek’s lectures at the London School of Economics were poorly
attended, Hayek’s defense of austerity changed disciplinary field from economics to
political philosophy. Hayek’s reply to Keynes’ General Theory was The Road to Serfdom
which is “a damning indictment of Keynesianism, but is not an attack on Keynesian
economics” (Schui, p. 120) because it largely sidesteps the question of how austerity
affects the economy, whether fiscal stimulus shortens recessions, and instead links larger
governments to fascist politics.
10
Although Hayek’s work proved enormously successful,

9
Prime Minister Thatcher is said to have pulled Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty out of her bag and
slammed it on the table at a meeting of the party, exclaiming “This is what we believe” (Wapshott, 2011, p.
258). With respect to President Reagan, he listed Hayek as one of the two or three most important
influences on his governing philosophy as he welcomed him to the White House. (Anderson, p. 164). Per
George Shultz, President Reagan put this philosophy into practice by insisting on the need for a recession
(Wapshott, 2011, p. 339).
10
When The Road to Serfdom was reviewed by Chicago University Press for publication, Frank Knight,
one of the founders of the Chicago School of Economics remarked “there is little or no economic theory in
the book” (Hayek, 1944/2007, p. 249). Moreover, though Hayek has proved an enormously influential
figure in economic thinking, his reputation as an economist was marginal at best – the University of
Chicago Economics department refused to hire him. Milton Friedman reflected “I am an enormous admirer
of Hayek, but not for his economics” (Wapshott, 2011, p. 183).

39
Hayek’s work is a historical and political analysis suggesting that austerity protects
against incremental encroachments by governments that gradually acclimate democratic
citizens and political structures to deprivations of freedom that culminate in a fascist
state. In this line of reasoning, socialism and fascism were born from the same strand of
government imposed economic planning as a means to secure a future with a strong state.
In the midst of the Cold War this line of thinking revitalized austerity as an economic
doctrine where economic performance was secondary to its ability to secure political
victory over a geopolitical adversary.
The idea that austerity is the remedy not for economic depression or inefficiency,
but government control is made explicit by Hayek (1944/2007) claiming that economic
liberty is not a means, but “in itself the highest political end.” (p. 97). The recovery of
Hayek’s austerity removes economic austerity from the realm of economic social science
and places its back into the world of moral philosophy, but substitutes the original virtue
of self-denial with liberty and makes it an axiomatic, rather than empirically falsifiable
argument. This retreat from the forensic claim concerning economic effects of austerity,
but not from advocacy of austerity itself suggests non-falsifiable epideictic arguments
about freedom, self-negation and social order constitute the basis for austerity arguments
while empirical claims are used in support if and when the intellectual currents render
them plausible.
The adoption of Hayek’s arguments by conservative policy makers in the U.S.
and Europe following stagflation aggravated the existing downturn, but this time the
worsening economic conditions did not discredit this version of austerity precisely
because a recovery was not promised – “suffering from the crisis was expected and

40
inevitable. It was the price to pay for liberty” (Schui, p. 143). On the contrary, for
Austrian economics the pain was a feature rather than a defect “Austrians saw in
recessions the necessary pain of austerity after the interventionist ‘party’” (Blyth, p. 89).
Subsequent to the oil shock of the 1970s and ascendance of conservatives to
political power along with the gradual decline of the size of the state as a share of the
economy organized labor, research once again emanated suggesting cuts to government
spending producing sustained economic growth. Alberto Alesina and Guido Tabbellini
(1990) developed a theory in which government debt was used strategically for political
ends, known among economic historians as “starving the beast.” Strategically, political
parties benefit from providing voters with benefits either in the form of additional
spending or tax cuts and leaving the deficit to be paid for by the future government either
through cuts or tax increases creating a deficit bias in democracies with alternating
political control.
11
However, this argument works better in parliamentary systems than in
the American system of checks and balances. If governments have an incentive to
provide voters with deficit financed economic benefits to boost their popularity, then by
definition opposing coalitions are incentivized to deprive voters of economic benefits.
Moreover, considerable political science research has shown that voters hold the party of
the president responsible for the state of the economy and rewards or punishes the party
accordingly even down to the level of state legislative races (Rogers, 2016). Since the
U.S. Congress has the power of the purse, the American system of government is

11
A variation on this in a less reputable corner of economics is the public choice theory which conceived of
government agents as rational self-interested agents acting in their own private interest, rather than on
behalf of the public, thus creating a bias towards ever more and higher spending through de facto
corruption see e.g. Bhagwati, 1982; Krueger, 1974; Tullock 1967.

41
structured towards austerity – not indefinite deficit spending in all circumstances bar the
rare case of one party controlling both houses of Congress and the Presidency.
Moreover, Persson & Svensson (1989) argued further that incumbent
governments creating higher debts than necessary also constrain the political power of
future rival governments. In this view, austerity ends a vicious cycle of politically
motivated deficit spending. Furthermore, Giavazzi & Pagano (1990) looked at European
countries that significantly cut spending and still managed to produce growth (they allow
that the results are somewhat inconclusive, but nevertheless claim their conclusion is
“tempting”) and argued that the positive effects of austerity depended on expectations of
future growth. Although filled with ample qualifications, the body of these works and
future works they inspired lent legitimacy to austerity economics as a doctrine producing
growth through ill-defined expectations and perceptions of future actions by governments
and private actors. Although these essays did not represent a consensus in
macroeconomic theory, these papers would lend enough of a fig leaf to the notion of
expansionary austerity that the defense of austerity after the 2008 financial crisis once
again shifted onto forensic territory - evidence for which had been scant in the preceding
six decades during which only the epideictic arguments were offered.

The 2008 Financial Crisis and its Aftermath
The aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the implementation of austerity in
Europe varied widely. The following section will briefly examine the United Kingdom
and Greece as case studies. The two countries both experienced the effects of austerity,
but under very different circumstances illustrating the diversity of austerity arguments.

42
Austerity in Britain
When Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative coalition government
assumed office in 2010 following the 2008 financial crisis it proposed and enacted an
austerity budget plan. The proposed and partially enacted cuts are on track to reduce
spending on public services as share of national income to the lowest levels on record
going back to 1948 and account for 60% of the governments’ overall fiscal consolidation
(Crawford & Keynes, 2015). At the outset, Prime Minister Cameron positioned the
proposed cuts to public services as a reluctant, yet pragmatic necessity. In his keynote
conference to the Tory delegates five months after forming a government, Cameron
addressed the anxiety concerning the scale of the austerity proposed by stating his own
hesitation and reluctance: “I wish there was another way…it’s stopped us slipping into
the nightmare they’ve seen in Greece” (Cameron, 2010, para. 102-9). In his New Year’s
Speech on December 31
st
2010 Cameron announced: “I didn’t go into politics to make
cuts… We're tackling the deficit because we have to – not out of some ideological zeal.
This is a government led by people with a practical desire to sort out this country's
problems, not by ideology” (Watt, 2013).
The public spending that was being cut – social housing, public transit, the
National Health Service and public education – formed the cornerstone of the post World
War II social contract in Britain which had been relatively uncontested for half a century
(Mendoza, 2015). David Cameron managed to justify significant cuts as necessary to
stave off an immediate debt crisis. However, the same conservative government still
managed to reduce corporate taxes to their lowest rate in history in addition to substantial
tax cuts for the top earners (Pope & Roantree, 2014).

43
Whereas the initial justifications for austerity were contingent on economic crisis
conditions and cuts to public services were framed as a tragic last resort, in 2013 at the
Lord Mayor’s Banquet Prime Minister Cameron indicated his intention to reduce the
scope of the public services permanently irrespective of economic conditions: “We need
to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently” (Watt, 2013, para. 4).
Moreover, when the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s revised its outlook on
Britain from negative to stable in 2010 immediately after the implementation of the
austerity program the Chancellor of the Exchequer took this as a “vote of confidence in
the coalition’s policies” (Porter & Aldrick, 2010, para. 3). The market, in other words,
had spoken and it had asked to continue the austerity program. Two years later several
ratings agencies saw the effects of austerity on economic growth and downgraded Britain
from stable to negative. However, despite the ratings agencies reversing course, Her
Majesty’s Treasury also saw this as a reason to continue with the austerity program: “this
is a reminder of why it is essential Britain sticks to its plans to deal with its debts” (Sibun
& Armitstead, 2012, para. 8).

Austerity in Greece
While austerity in Great Britain was self-imposed and the country enjoys the
flexibility of its own currency which it can thus devalue if deemed necessary to spur
employment though exports, Greece has had ever more stringent austerity measures
forced upon it by the troika (International Monetary Fund, European Commission and the
European Central Bank). Krugman (2015b) summarizes the effects of the austerity
program as:

44
one of history’s epic policy failures. Even if you ignore the economic and
human toll, it was an utter failure in terms of restoring solvency. In 2009,
before the program, Greek debt was 126 percent of GDP. After five years,
debt was … 177 percent of GDP. (Para 1).
That is, even on its own terms of stability and debt reduction austerity failed utterly in
Greece. Throughout the five-year period after the imposition of austerity causing mass
unemployment through deep government cuts the Greek government still ran a primary
surplus – that is Greece collected more money in tax receipts than it spent on non-interest
spending. The increased debt burden was purely a function of a shrinking economy
12
and
the resulting increased interest rates on its debts. Despite these realities, arguments still
abound purporting Greek intransigence on implementing the necessary austerity – despite
running a cyclically adjusted primary surplus at 5% compared to for instance Germany’s
2%.
Negotiations between the Troika and various iterations of the Greek government –
all left of center politically - concerning how much money would be given to Greece in
exchange for what level of austerity is revealing of the political appetite for austerity.
Perhaps no measure better illustrates how much Greece has already cut than its health
care sector: health spending has been cut by 40% since 2008 leading to 35,000 health
workers fired, a 40% rise in infant mortality, the HIV infection rate doubling and Malaria
cases being reported for the first time since 1970 (Stuckler & Basu, 2013). Despite the
severity of these cuts, the Greek government was not permitted to meet its surplus goals

12
The size of the Greek Gross Domestic Product dropped 20% from 2009 to 2014 – comparable to Imperial
Germany’s depression during and after World War I from 1913-1920 (Krugman, 2015a).

45
through taxes which could be distributionally progressive thus sparing the most destitute
– it had to be met through additional spending cuts (Krugman, 2015b).
In addition to Greek intransigence and general unwillingness to accept the
necessary pain, austerity is enveloped in the “TINA” mantra - There is No Alternative.
Because no lender is willing to provide adequate money to Greece without conditioning
austerity, austerity itself is seen as not in need of further justification. However, providing
the funding necessary to reverse austerity would be an economically feasible option –
though not politically feasible. The larger point is that subsequent to the failure of
austerity in Greece, there is not even the moral justification in terms of either freedom or
the virtue of self-negation. The implied justification is that Greece must be made to suffer
for its past sins of dishonest accounting and reckless spending.
Additionally, a left-leaning government being forced to enact austerity by outside
lenders points to the importance of understanding how arguments for austerity circulate
not just within and between publics, but also less democratically accountable
intergovernmental bodies such as the European Commission, European Central Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. The limits to Greece’s sovereignty also adds to existing
research suggesting that: “politics takes a hard right turn following financial crises” due
to perceived governmental moral hazards and favoritism (Funke, Schularick & Trebesch,
2015.) To this can be added reduced sovereignty for debtor nations electing left of center
governments.

46
Political and Media Dynamics Enabling Austerity Controversy
Of the factors enabling the rise of austerity as a manufactured controversy in the
current American political landscape, none is more significant than political polarization.
The gradual political polarization of media consumption, voting habits, residential
neighborhoods and community organizations has so profoundly affected the behavior and
attitudes of voters, legislators and media figures that previously settled scientific
questions of fact have reemerged as political controversies for the benefit of partisan
politics. This section will detail how austerity as a manufactured controversy must be
understood in the context of political polarization, the incentive structure of the American
political system, and how media shape the formation of public attitudes toward
alternative economic policies.
During the 1992 presidential election, a clearly frustrated President George H. W.
Bush lamented that voters were misled into thinking the economy was worse than it was,
due to the media focus on negative stories on the economy, thus giving Governor Clinton
an unfair advantage (Wines, 1992). The media, in other words, misled people into
thinking unemployment was prevalent by only focusing on negative economic stories and
features. Goidel & Langley (1995) found President Bush’s complaint had some merit
since there were more negative news stories than expected given the level of economic
activity, and that these news stories changed public perceptions of how widespread
unemployment was as a phenomenon, but also public opinion about how important
unemployment was as a political issue. Subsequent research replicated and extended
findings revealing that not only does economic news that bleeds lead, it frames attitudes

47
and opinions towards economic conditions in fearful and negative ways
13
(Holbrook &
Garand, 1996; Hester & Gibson 2003).
In the context of austerity, a key implication of news stories that create greater
fear than is warranted by the data is that economic crisis is rhetorically constructed and
maintained. Although affective intelligence literature (for instance Marcus, Neumann &
MacKuen, 2000) posits that an electorate reacts to crises rationally by more closely
examining candidates and positions because of increased fear, I argue that crises are not
objective realities, but often subjective experiences that cumulatively constitute
constraints and public risks. Here I borrow from Habermas’ (1976) conception of crisis
originating in the medical sense as not just being objective external phenomena since “we
would not speak of a crisis, when it is medically a question of life and death, if it were
only a matter of an objective process viewed from the outside, if the patient were not also
subjectively involved” (p. 1). Fear may thus stoke crisis unnecessarily, and indeed I argue
with respect to the economy may work productively as a political tactic since it can
reflexively create the reality it posits and thus by extension justify radical political and
policy change. The crisis inspiring and resulting from austerity differs from the situation
described by Habermas in two key aspects. For Habermas rationality crises prompted by
economic dislocations were a defect of modern capitalism, which the state sought to
overcome by technocratic solutions via better economic policy to stave off wider
legitimation crises. However, as will be described in detail later, austerity differs in that

13
It should be noted that research also shows that how much the public can be hoodwinked into thinking
the economy is in a markedly different condition than it is has limits – the public cannot be led anywhere
by the media (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Popkin, 1991). Moreover, defenders of the original rational choice
theory positing voters capably vote based on accurate perceptions of economic conditions still abound,
based on original work by Fair, 1978; Fiorina, 1978; and Fiorina, 1981.

48
the economic pain is a feature and not a defect, legitimation and rationality crises tend to
bestow political power to minority parties in particular if their political program is based
on minimizing the delegitimized state power over the economy. This inversion also
points to the second major difference from Habermas’ legitimation crisis: Habermas was
concerned that public technocratic systems were colonizing the lifeworld of the private
sphere, but as della Porta (2015) and Bauman (2000) argued, due to the gradual erosion
of the welfare state current legitimation crises stem from private domination over the
public. In that arguments in favor of austerity economics are non-falsifiable, they
constitute epideictic celebrations of the private individual in a neoliberal society. As such,
they exist only outside of the technical sphere and exemplify how the lifeworld can also
be exploited by campaign rhetoric to colonize and delegitimize technocratic reason and
remove it from political relevance.
The perceived necessity of draconian cuts depends on a perception of debt crisis,
insufficient economic recovery as well as faith in the logic of austerity. Moreover, unlike
the news media during the time of the George H. W. Bush administration, the partisan
nature of the current media ecology dilutes the power of mainstream legacy news to
dominate national narratives. A telling case was the moderately positive jobs report of
released the first Friday of October a month before the 2012 presidential election. The
report resulted in the unemployment rate to drop from 8.1% to 7.8%, which prompted
former General Electric CEO Jack Welch to tweet “These Chicago guys will do anything.
Can’t debate so change [sic] numbers.” The comment resulted in wall-to-wall coverage
on Fox News and mockery on liberal outlets (Nocera, 2012). Even basic facts like the
release of how many Americans entered the job force which previously contributed to a

49
publicly shared factual premise about the economy is turned into a controversial theory to
be defended or attacked according to the ideological preference of the audience.
Further, the speed of new media and its international reach amplifies the potential
for self-fulfilling prophecies in market panics (Alberti & Hollihan, 2014). For Republican
advocates of austerity, emphasizing the threat of the debt and labeling it a crisis achieved
three core objectives; it created a perception that President Obama was feckless in
dealing with economic issues, it emphasized the need for austerity policy, and it created
the anemic recovery that legitimized the original accusation of President Obama being a
poor steward of the economy.
However, the capacity for news media to affect perceptions of the economy in
mainly negative ways is part of a greater role to define how the public conceives of the
economy through metaphors and narratives. Suttles’ (2010) study of front page news
demonstrates how the very notion of an “economy” was slowly introduced by
newspapers following the Great Depression, changing the way the public conceived of
economic conditions from an inevitable changing of the seasons to a set of conditions
dependent on policy. Quantifiable attitudes about the economy are thus a product of a
larger rhetorically constructed – and often explicitly moralistic – narrative built on
metaphors foregrounding scene, agents and agency. Austerity as a controversy should
thus properly be understood in relation to prevalent narratives about political actors’ and
parties’ motivations, governmental competence, transparency and integrity, the state of
economics as a social science, and the determinants of economic growth.
The ways in which economic narratives and news are embedded in national
discourse is more than ever characterized by political polarization to an extent not

50
previously seen. Barring a notable exception (Fiorina, Abrams & Pope, 2010)
14
there is a
broad consensus that political polarization – the ideological distance on a left right divide
– between ordinary Americans has grown substantially.
15
Levendusky (2009), for
instance, finds that a great “sorting” has taken place where parties have become less
diverse in terms of the policies their elites support; Blue Dog Democrats, and especially
Dixiecrats in the South who are socially conservative, have switched to the Republican
Party and Rockefeller Republicans’ influence within the Republican Party has diminished
considerably. Therefore, by having more clearly defined political parties and political
candidates who hew closely to the party line, being a Republican or Democrat no longer
leaves a lot of ideological flexibility so voters and the public have a much clearer idea
what they do and do not support. Thus, voters more clearly and consistently define their
own partisan allegiances. Recent research by Abramowitz & Webster (2015) provides a
startling statistic on the disappearance of split ticket voting to evidence how prominent
the development has been. The correlation between votes for the party of senate
candidates and the party of presidential candidates has increased from .21 in 1994 to .84
in 2012-14, or in other words “the relationship is now more than four times stronger than
it was during the 1990s” (p. 20). If the baseline of comparison is stretched back to 1970
the relationship is now 27 times as strong (Chait, 2015).

14
For a thorough and specific refutation of this study see Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008.
15
An important caveat to this description is that though it is accurate to state both political parties have
moved farther away from each other in each direction, the polarization is asymmetric in the that the right
has moved much farther right than the left has moved left (and even then, the left has moderated
economically even has it has moved to the left on social issues) (Hacker & Pierson, 2006; Hacker &
Pierson, 2015; Kilgore, 2015; McCarty, Pool, Rosenthal & Hare, 2012). An instructive anecdote is Senator
Dick Lugar (R-IN) who lost his primary election for being too moderate. The mainstream media depicted
his loss as tragic because he represented the moderate part of the Republican Party, but when he entered the
Senate in 1978 he represented the right wing of Senate Republicans and has only grown less moderate since
(Karol, 2012).

51
Consequently, the incentive to appeal to a shrinking pool of independents at the
expense of motivating an ever more partisan and ideologically homogenous base shrinks
at every level of polarization. With an ever greater incentive to appeal to the base
informed by partisan media outlets and not voters with mixed preferences, the political
risk for individual legislators and political parties to defend pseudo-scientific policies are
greatly reduced as the power of mainstream and legacy media over their target voters has
sharply diminished. Republican voters specifically distrust media sources that are not part
of the conservative media ecosystem, ensuring the more politically perilous position for
conservative legislators is now to defend the consensus of scientific position if it runs
counter to the party strategy, rather than the inverse (Grossman & Hopkins, 2016). Devin
Nunes (R-CA) attributes the rise of online and for profit media outlets for spreading false
information, which then constrains his options as a legislator:

I used to spend ninety per cent of my constituent response time on people
who call, e-mail, or send a letter, such as, ‘I really like this bill, H.R.
123,’…’Ten per cent were about “Chemtrails from airplanes are poisoning
me” to every other conspiracy theory that’s out there. And that has
essentially flipped on its head (Lizza, 2015).
Similarly, Raul Labrador (R-ID) noted that the debt ceiling crisis where the congressional
Republicans threatened to default on the U.S. debt if they did not get their way did not
negatively impact his Party as its polling favorability ratings recovered within a few
months after the crisis (Lizza, 2015). Moreover, in addition to not suffering permanent
political costs with general favorability, the intraparty dynamics favor such extreme
partisan acts because they reduce risks of primary challenges, which are the main threats

52
to congressional members in safely gerrymandered districts while also elevating the
national profile of the more extreme candidates. Because voting blocs have become so
hardened, the political risk calculation of defending orthodox science and abiding
political norms of pursuing bipartisanship has changed in favor of ever more partisanship.
Furthermore, while the polling on the relative favorability of the two parties was
unaffected by the crisis over the debt ceiling, these crises (the government shutdown is
another example) erode public trust in the capacity of the government to function,
gradually building towards a legitimation crisis favoring the Republican Party.
Different causes have been posited for the deepening polarization, gerrymandering
of districts, the increasingly polarized media reporting, social media sustained echo
chambers, fear and/or loathing of the opposing party, networks of motivated political
activists, and racial resentment have all been shown to contribute to the phenomenon
(Abramowitz & Webster, 2015; Arcenaux, 2015; Jamieson & Capella, 2008; Layman,
Carsey & Horowitz, 2006; Levendusky, 2013; McCarty, Pool & Rosenthal, 2006;
McCarty, Poole & Rosenthal, 2009; Tesler, 2013). Irrespective of the reasons behind the
polarization, this project argues that it enables and inhibits certain types of arguments and
modes of deliberation.
To that end, it is necessary to understand the links between partisanship,
polarization, information processing and identity. The importance of partisanship has
been a cornerstone in political science research ever since the seminal work The
American Voter authored by Campbell, Miller, Converse & Stokes (1960) argued for the
importance of “enduring partisan commitments in shaping attitudes toward political
objects” (p. 135). Experimental research has shown that voters when forced to choose

53
between the policies they favor and the party they are loyal to, consistently choose party
loyalty (Cohen, 2003). Furthermore, contrary to the precepts of rational choice theory,
Larry Bartels (2002) has shown that more than 50% of “strong” Democrats believed that
inflation had gotten worse under President Reagan despite inflation falling by almost
two-thirds and Republicans similarly suggesting the budget deficit increased under
President Clinton’s tenure (pp. 134-138).
16
These findings are corroborated and extended
by Kuklinski et al. (2000) who focus on misinformation, its importance to public policy
deliberations, and how difficult it is to correct political partisans’ factually misinformed
opinions. Kuklinski et al. (2000) argue that while low information or guessing incorrectly
is a problem, a potentially larger problem is misinformation – incorrect information
confidently assumed to be accurate – because it is resilient to public information
campaigns and well informed public deliberation.
Furthermore, even if the relevant factual information is disseminated, Gaines et al.
(2007) show through a panel study of attitudes toward the Iraq war that partisan prior
attitudes modulate interpretations of correct facts. That is, both liberals and conservatives
had accurate perceptions of the number of casualties each month but both used these facts
to support their prior ideologically aligned policy of preference regarding troop
withdrawal or support for the surge respectively. Moreover, partisanship affects general
dispositions and attitudes towards non-political factors. Michael Tesler (2013) argues that

16
Prior, Sood & Khanna (2015) have, however, posited an interesting methodological question which
potentially undermines the thesis of a public misinformed along the lines of their partisan prior
commitments. When respondents were rewarded for their participation regardless of what they answered,
the study replicated partisan misinformed answers, but when respondents were rewarded based on the
accuracy of their answers Republicans suddenly remembered that the deficit shrank under Bill Clinton’s
presidency etc. This points to the possibility that surveys reflect partisan signaling more than actual
recollection or knowledge.

54
racialization explains a very large amount of the post-Obama polarization, but also that
this polarization affects attitudes on whether the movie 12 Years a Slave deserved the
Best Picture Academy Award (53% of Democrats, but only 15% of Republicans Agreed)
and President Obama’s dog’s favorability (when the picture of the Portuguese Water
Poodle was presented as belonging to the late Senator Ted Kennedy it was viewed more
favorably than if accurately presented as Bo, the dog owned by Obama) (Desmond-
Harris, 2015).
These studies speak to the problems facing efforts to facilitate honest public
argumentation concerning shared public policy issues, but as Iyenagar & Hahn (2009)
demonstrated, the audience segmentation of ideological news outlets prevents audiences
from encountering opposing arguments that are not immediately rebutted with
ideologically comforting counterarguments. The growth of new media and the resulting
increasingly diverse news menu amplifies this problem: “Internet technology will, in
practice, narrow rather than widen users’ political horizons. (Iyenager & Hahn, 2009, p.
34).
Moreover, the collapse of legacy media is not just reflected in the declining
numbers of viewers and readers, but also in the type of audience members and their effect
on attitudes and the public discourse. Baum & Groeling’s (2008) content analysis of new
media concludes by noting that new media users: “tend to be individuals to whom typical
members of the public turn for interpretations of political issues and events. Their
significance to broader patterns of public opinion, and hence American politics, thus in
all likelihood exceeds their raw numbers” (p. 360). In addition to polarizing the content
and audience, new media also collapses the audience for political arguments: “it used to

55
be possible for political regimes to create alternative messages for different audiences and
thus to preserve a level of nuance, local contextualizing, and perhaps even outright
deception…in our increasingly connected and globalized world, this is no longer
possible” (Riley & Hollihan, 2012, p. 61). Collectively these conditions create a fertile
breeding ground for manufactured controversies as they appeal to the partisan audience
members, are profitable click-bait for partisan new media or cable outlets, while political
actors can no longer contain their efforts at pandering to their base to niche media outlets.
Lastly, polarization also affects the incentives of political actors. Hollihan (2009)
writes that: “the kind of polarization we now see may make it almost impossible for
government to act on difficult and fiercely contested issues” (p. 292). This pessimism
even assumes that politicians would prefer to compromise and work on a bipartisan basis,
but are being constrained by their parties, donors, and particularly activists. However, the
historic level of dysfunction in the years following 2009 led congressional scholars
Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein (2012) to write their aptly titled book It’s Even
Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New
Politics of Extremism. Mann & Ornstein (2012) focus most of their withering criticism on
the Republican Party, which in their assessment has become: “scornful of compromise;
unpersuaded by conventional understandings of facts, evidence, and science; and
dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far
from the center of American politics it’s extremely difficult to enact policies” (p. xiv).
Mann & Ornstein also detail the cynical political calculation of undermining the
American government as a tactic exemplified by the historically unprecedented and
absurd instance of six U.S. Senators filibustering legislation they themselves co-

56
sponsored simply because President Obama also lent it his support. By withholding
support, Republicans render everything proposed and assumed by the president and the
Democratic Party partisan, even mainstream and orthodox science.
Senator McConnell, arguably the most important and savviest member of
Congress on Capitol Hill, was according to Jonathan Chait (2014):
among the first political leaders to grasp that Republicans had everything
to gain and nothing to lose from withholding support for every major
element of Obama’s agenda — that the old Beltway folklore, which
warned the opposition party that voters would punish them if they
appeared obstructionist, had no basis in reality. Most people pay no
attention to the details of policy, and form rough judgments on the basis of
how much noise and controversy rises out of Washington. ‘It was
absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of
the bill [The Affordable Care Act Ed.] were able to say it was bipartisan, it
tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it
out,’ he confessed.
Nor was this an example of the Senate minority leader misspeaking; only months later he
stated: “We worked very hard to keep our fingerprints off of these proposals. Because we
thought…that the only way the American people would know that a great debate was
going on was if the measures were not bipartisan” (Green, 2011). Republicans thus
abandoned legislation they had previously openly supported and co-sponsored, or voted
for in committee to deny the president the ability to present his legislation as bipartisan,
thereby artificially manufacturing a politically polarized gulf between the two parties in

57
order to achieve what McConnell called the Republicans’ “single most important political
goal” – “making Obama a one-term President” (Schneider, 2011).
That the goal of the tactic was to delegitimize governance is also supported by
congressional reporter Robert Draper who was embedded with Republican legislators.
Draper reported that immediately after the 2008 election and before President Obama’s
inauguration top Republican lawmakers met and agreed to show “united and unyielding
opposition to the president’s economic policies. Eight days later, Minority Whip Cantor
would hold the House Republicans to a unanimous No against Obama’s economic
stimulus plan” (Capehart, 2012). Moreover, former Senator Arlen Specter, who was a
Republican at the time, admitted to the media that it was indeed the Republicans’ plan to
oppose Obama’s stimulus measure even though many supported it (Grim, 2010).
The contours of the controversy surrounding austerity have followed McConnell’s
cynical yet insightful logic: the path to defeating the governing coalition is to defeat
bipartisan governance per se. One of the keys to defeating bipartisan governance is to kill
any legislation proposed by the president irrespective of its merit or overlap with
traditional Republican platforms because conceding agreement on any level would
obligate Republicans to legislatively cooperate. This unified level of legislative
obstruction led President Obama to reflect: “If I said the sky was blue, they’d say ‘no.’ If
I said fish live in the sea, they’d say ‘no.’” (Lee, 2010).
The present focus on the Republican Party’s unwillingness to cooperate should
not be mistaken for vilification of conservative politics or even necessarily conservative
politicians, but is a consequence of their status as minority party and desperate efforts to

58
regain control of Washington.
17
Republicans sought to gain power in order to more
closely align public policy with their – and presumably their voters’ – interpretation of
the public good. The disincentive to cooperate, and the incentive to manufacture
controversy, are not based on conservative pathologies, but are structural in nature; every
time the president succeeds it hurts the minority party, and every time the president fails
it benefits the minority party. If the minority party consistently and successfully reach
legislative compromises with the president that both can support, they have no case for
why a change in power is necessary (Lee, 2009). To focus on conservative political
strategy as uniquely immoral and unpatriotic is myopic since it offers no theoretical
explanatory power – why did conservative politicians suddenly become deplorable? The
causal mechanism for this political development is structural in nature, as the
argumentative terrain has changed due to external circumstances incentivizing a different
strategy. Moreover, with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States
liberal commentators and Democratic legislators have all of a sudden found themselves in
a very similar situation. Prior to knowing who the president-elect will nominate to
various positions in government, several Democratic Senators have gone on the record to
state they will force extended deliberation over their appointments, and Everett & Schor
(2016) report that “The minority could also stymie lower-level nominees and potentially
keep the Senate focused on executive confirmations for weeks as Trump assumes the
presidency and congressional Republicans try to capitalize on their political momentum.”
Dianne Feinstien (D-CA) on the issue of deliberatively sabotaging the incoming president

17
This is not an assessment of the substance of Republican policy, but only of the structural incentives
underlying the process behind legislative moves. As of the present moment, the Republican Party stands to
benefit from signals and showings of bipartisan cooperation, though no such attempts have been made by
President Trump.

59
via delaying and extending confirmation hearings remarked: “Past is present, and what
goes around comes around. Now, those who are pretty hackneyed sayings, but those are
really true around here” (Everett & Schor, 2016).
Moreover, most of the public attribute the presidency with such immense power
that they hold the president – and by extension his/her party solely responsible for
everything both good and bad (Healy, 2008). The logical implication for Democrats and
liberals seeking to regain political power is to worsen social conditions on every level in
society enough that voters will sour on the incumbent. This description might sound
extreme, but it is exactly what leads liberal political analyst Jonathan Chait to advise
Democrats against policy he himself considers meritorious (2016): “Helping Trump pass
a bipartisan bill that will spread prosperity is a gigantic political boon — one that will
make it far more difficult for Democrats to contest either the midterm elections or
Trump’s reelection bid.” Quite how far Democrats will go in destroying President
Trump’s governance as part of a greater strategy to regain political power is at present
writing unclear – what is clear is that they understand they will rewarded rather than
punished by the voters for doing so.

Conclusion
This examination of legislative means and ends in a political environment where
polarization is total, comprehensive though it is, still leaves open the space for close
study of the role of argumentation. The straightforward implication for Republicans was
that the shortest argumentative distance between their status as minority party and their
goal of political control was through the manufacturing of controversy on key legislative
issues. Similar tactics will undoubtedly be deployed once again by Democrats out of

60
power, though legitimation crisis as a permanent political tactic tends to disadvantage
those who seek to defend and uphold institutions being undermined so the long-term cost
is steeper for Democrats than for Republicans.
The successful deployment of austerity as a controversy was the culmination of a
perfect storm of structural factors in media and political developments, as well as
recurring narratives surrounding economics - existing and emerging media norms that
privilege coverage negative in tone, alarming events speaking to ideological preferences
of the audience all insulate those who defend austerity from political backlash. Moreover,
from an argumentation standpoint, there is a feedback loop in which arguments based on
manufactured controversies further entrenches partisanship and political polarization,
which in turn lowers the political cost of similar arguments the next time. This feedback
loop suggests an uneven argumentative terrain favoring austerity as a legitimized
manufactured controversy, but not how the argument was settled. What follows is a close
examination of how austerity arguments were treated among a network of prominent
blogging economists.

61
Chapter Three: Formation of Expert Consensus: Technical Arguments on Austerity
Policies

“Crying Fire, Fire in Noah’s Flood” – Paul Krugman (2008)

This chapter argues that on three separate policy questions relating to austerity
economics, there was no support for the theory among expert economists who published
their opinions concurrently with the legislative deliberation. The discussions taking place
were data-driven, fact-based, substantive, informal, primarily empirical, but also
theoretical. In addition, this chapter makes the case for the possible use of the
blogosphere rather than peer-reviewed journals as textual basis for scientific rhetorical
analysis. I begin by outlining the role of blogs in forming the experts’ opinions and
identifying the criteria I considered in my selection of blogs for analysis. I then describe
three related but legislatively separate events in the larger argument on austerity in 2011:
Rep. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget, the arguments for and against extending the
debt ceiling, and the resulting budget sequester. I close by assessing the rhetorical appeals
offered in the blogosphere and their role in shaping the expert consensus documented in
the introductory chapter.
18

18
This is an appropriate place to make an important caveat. While it is the case that political conservatives
embraced austerity policies for reasons outlined in Chapter 2, breaching the debt ceiling is not a traditional
small-c conservative idea or even a political goal of the modern conservative movement. Austerity
economics as an economic theory, rather than political agenda, is orthogonally related to conservatism;
thus, its universal rejection among politically conservative economists does not present a contradiction or
challenge to conservatives within the field of macroeconomics. The area within which there is unanimity is
in fact quite small and isolated, and it concerns the fundamental question as to whether austerity economics
is even a plausible macroeconomic theory. This unanimity of thought was captured in a study including an
ideologically diverse set of prestigious academic economists undertaken by the Booth School of Business
Survey at the University of Chicago. This is not to suggest that there is any such consensus in support of
the form or scale of President Obama’s anti-austerity policy, or its net cost-benefit analysis, only that it was

62
The Econoblogosphere and Austerity Argumentation
In assessing consensus formation and strategies of expert argumentation within
the field of academic economics, the most obvious sources to explore would traditionally
be the highest ranked double or single blind peer-reviewed academic journals. This is the
approach followed by Deirdre McCloskey (1998) in her seminal work Rhetoric of
Economics. The subject of McCloskey’s rhetorical analysis is peer-reviewed articles
because this form of research is what is frequently cited as evidence to support claims
across disciplinary fields, and what elevates some theories and diminish others. Yet,
McCloskey’s reading of peer-reviewed economic articles is that while they purport to
objectively present findings, they are in fact jargon laden and passive voiced literary
monstrosities that use a collection of rhetorical devices to obscure the authors’
judgments, choices and dialogic commitments to academic interlocutors.
Today, I will argue that investigating peer-reviewed academic journals is not the
best way to understand how austerity arguments are tested, and that such journals are not
the primary location for cutting edge argumentation at the interface of theoretical
macroeconomics and applied policymaking. Paul Krugman (2013c) points to the
procedural delay in peer-reviewed literature as essentially rendering many arguments
therein obsolete by time of publication:

directionally accurate in terms of reducing unemployment relative to the status quo or the proposed
austerity policies. N. Gregory Mankiw (2011) sums up the coherence of conservative anti-austerity
positions and opposition to conventional liberal economic policy: “from a welfare standpoint, ‘conventional
fiscal policy is the demand management tool of last resort.’ In other words, in that model, conventional
fiscal policy is effective, but it is still not the best tool to take off the shelf when facing a collapse in
aggregate demand.” Alternative conservative anti-austerity tools include employment tax credits directed at
individuals and private corporations, tax credits for families, and aggressive monetary policy like negative
interest rates to stimulate demand in a demand-deficient economy. Nor does anti-austerity policy need to be
progressively distributed as was the case with the stimulus program enacted by President Obama, as the
benefits of government investment in high tech industries would primarily accrue to high earners.

63
For decades, the journals have basically been tombstones — places that
validate your work, that you can cite when seeking tenure, but not where
people keep up with what’s happening now. Working papers have long
been where the active discussion takes place. A case in point: I
released this paper in working paper form in 1988; by the time it was
formally published in 1991, there was already a huge derivative literature,
which I ended up citing in the published version. (para 5).
Working papers have historically played this intermediary role of sharing preliminary
work and accelerating research beyond the constraint of peer-reviewed publication. In the
current digital age, however, blogs have become the default forum for new arguments in
several branches of academic economic research – especially as it pertains to ongoing
legislation, economic crises and fast moving current affairs. Blogs are ideal for this role
as they are current, readily accessible and interactive. Blog posts are published live and,
unlike working papers, are not required to present original but preliminary research –
instead blogs evaluate ongoing claims, arguments and talk between economists in a much
more colloquial and informal way, functionally approximating the conversations between
economists that previously took place in seminars and conferences. While tradition
dictates that this live dialogue has to be formalized and decoded in the form of a peer-
reviewed paper to be considered legitimate, the retrospective nature of peer-reviewed
publications also makes them unsuitable for understanding how consensus is formed in
real time, in response to legislation: “events are moving fast, and the long lead times of
conventional publication essentially guarantee that it will be irrelevant to current policy
issues” (Krugman, 2013e).

64
Moving from peer-reviewed economic journals to the econoblogosphere – the
name given to the community of academic economic bloggers – thus changes the type of
scientific argumentation analyzed – both in form and function – and presents a new
avenue for research into how and why certain arguments win favor. Whereas the bulk of
the field of rhetoric of economics either examines peer-reviewed economic journals
(Goodnight & Green, 2010; Hanan, Ghosh & Brooks, 2014; McCloskey, 1998) or
economic arguments mediated through journalists and political advocates (Asen, 2009;
Aune, 2001); Hingstman & Goodnight (2011) are the rare scholars in the rhetoric of
economics who consider how economists address the public rather than each other in
their reading of the Hayek-Keynes exchange of letters to The Times of London. However,
much has happened technologically since handwritten letters to The Times of London
were a primary means of public exchange between expert economists. For one,
arguments in the econoblogosphere are more data driven and visual as datasets and
graphs are presented and hyperlinked and they permit public comments that the authors
engage.
One of the primary distinct qualities of the econoblogosphere is its public nature.
One aspect of this “publicness” is the erosion of old norms about who gets to participate:
It used to be the case that to have a role in the economics discourse you
had to have formal credentials and a position of authority; you had to be a
tenured professor at a top school publishing in top journals, or a senior
government official. Today the ongoing discourse, especially in
macroeconomics, is much more free-form. But you don’t get to play a
major role in that discourse by publishing clever Slateish snark; you get

65
there by saying smart things backed by data…at this point the real
discussion in macro, and to a lesser extent in other fields, is taking place in
the econoblogosphere. This is true even for research done at official
institutions like the IMF and the Fed (Krugman, 2013e, para. 2-5).
Journalists and private-sector analysts who specialize early and dig into data can and do
become respected authorities – a mortgage blogger writing under the pseudonym “Tanta”
was cited in a formal paper by the Federal Reserve (Mihm, 2008). Theoretically, of
course, laypeople can submit articles for peer-review, but for all practical purposes it is a
closed conversation in part because the ongoing academic conversation is so jargon-laden
as to render the arguments indecipherable to all but a small selection of elite economists.
The econoblogosphere is different in this second aspect of “publicness” – its accessibility
to the public because of its rhetorical crossing of technical and public spheres: “The blogs
offer a rolling crash course in economics as authoritative as any textbook, but far more
accessible. It's a conversation that's simultaneously esoteric and irreverent, combining
technical discussions of liquidity traps and yield curves with profane putdowns” (Mihm,
2008, para. 6). While the rhetoric of the econoblogosphere makes it possible for the wider
public to engage, the audience is still marginal compared to mass media outlets.
However, blogs also have a wider agenda setting effect that traditional peer-reviewed
journals lack:
‘The real leverage of blogs is that journalists read them,’ says Yves Smith,
creator of Naked Capitalism, a hard-hitting blog that covers Wall Street.
Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture agrees. ‘The blogs are influencing what
is put on the table for debate’ (Mihm, 2008, para. 13).

66
While the lack of barriers to publication makes blogs more open and public, the absence
of the gatekeeping function of peer-review might cause concern that the quality of
arguments is too low to properly shape the field. However, as reported by The Economist:
“blogs do impose some intellectual standards. Errors of fact or logic are spotted, ridiculed
and corrected. Areas of disagreement are highlighted and sometimes even narrowed” (“A
less dismal debate”, 2011).
Given the size and scope of the econoblogosphere, judgments about who to
exclude are inevitable. My criterion for inclusion is based on a bloggers’ importance to
the ongoing debate as measured by their rankings on the Onalytica Index for economic
blogs and how often his/her arguments get cited by other bloggers (a highly ranked
econoblog that only focuses on financial regulation and not macroeconomics is thus not
relevant for this study). The key aspect to consider is the diffusion and circulation of
arguments in the econoblogosphere, where the more central nodes in an argument
network are the most significant. I have chosen to rely heavily on Nobel Laureate Paul
Krugman’s blog Conscience of a Liberal – as it has been the most frequently cited
economics blog for over a decade, and because Krugman posts often and engages others
very directly. As a result of being the center of many debates in which he accurately
predicted continued low interest rates and inflation in direct opposition to his detractors,
Krugman has earned the nickname “KrugTron the Invincible” (Smith, 2013). Moreover,
unlike most famous economists Krugman has become something of a cult figure being
depicted in the This Modern World cartoon by Tom Tomorrow (2012) and starring in the
2012 comedy film Get Him to the Greek. The additional blogs considered in my analysis
and authored by academic economists are: Noah Smith’s noahpinion, Mark Thoma’s

67
Economist’s View and J. Bradford DeLong’s Grasping Reality With Both Hands. Beyond
these, I make use of the blogs by the following data journalists and economics reporters:
Ryan Avent’s Free Exchange at The Economist, Martin Wolf at Financial Times and
Ezra Klein at Wonkbook published by The Washington Post. Though additional bloggers
could be included, for reasons of feasibility and clarity these four academic economists –
who post often, are cited frequently on macroeconomic issues and are among the highest
ranked for influence – can be considered both representative of and influential on the
econoblogosphere as a whole, and form an adequate basis to assess the circulation of
technical arguments on austerity. Three of these bloggers – Paul Krugman, J. Bradford
Delong and Mark Thoma – are explicitly left of center, or at least opposed to the
legislative agenda of the current instantiation of the Republican Party (Paul Krugman
especially was very hawkish during the 1990s and to the right of President Clinton on a
number of issues). At first glance this would seem to risk giving the analysis a left-of-
center bent that is unrepresentative of the wider community of academic economists.
However, this concern is unwarranted for two reasons. First, as established earlier,
austerity economics is not a position supported theoretically by politically conservative
economists and is unrelated to the wider debate within modern macroeconomics. Second,
I also make significant use of data journalists and financial reporters from the blogs of
The Financial Times and The Economist that are traditionally economically conservative
publications. I allow that these bloggers’ political analysis and vituperation against the
Republicans is unrepresentative of macroeconomists as a group and is not reflective of
any consensus position, but their macroeconomic analysis – while often written as part of

68
and inseparably from political analysis – is rooted in a consensus position ranging from
the International Monetary Fund to the University of Chicago Department of Economics.

The Path to Prosperity
A central aspect to the American conservative economic policy agenda has been
reducing the size and scope of the state and cutting the provision of social services. The
most prominent legislator in designing legislation to that effect in recent decades has
been the current Speaker of the House of Representatives and previously Chairman of the
House Budget Committee – Rep. Paul Ryan. Rep. Ryan’s budget The Path to Prosperity:
Restoring America’s Promise became the Republican blueprint for economic policy, and
the unifying point around which conservatives rallied when asked for specifics regarding
how they saw the role for government: “Nearly every important conservative opinion-
maker and think tank has rallied around his policies. Nearly every Republican in the
House and the Senate has voted in favor of some version of his budget plan” (Lizza,
2012, para. 7). The budget was a logical continuation of previous budgets written by
Ryan, the first of which was H.R. 6110 The Roadmap for America's Future Act of 2008.
Key features of this budget included replacing Medicare with direct payments to seniors
to purchase medical care on the private market, replacing Medicaid with lump sum
funding to states to spend as they saw fit and reducing payments to the Social Security
trust fund (Lizza, 2012). Although the budget attracted only eight co-sponsors it was
praised by right leaning think tanks and publications and thus elevated Ryan’s status
among his conservative peers (Lizza, 2012). Two years later, under very different and
less stable economic conditions, Ryan modified H.R. 6110 into H.R. 4529 The Roadmap

69
for America’s Future Act of 2010 which maintained the privatization of Medicare, Social
Security and block granting Medicaid along with dramatic cuts in each – total Medicare
payments were cut by more than a factor of three – along with the abolition of capital
gains and dramatic cuts to the top tax rates (Klein, 2010). Although substantively the
proposal was very similar to the previous version, Ryan characterized the 2010 version:
as a manifesto that drew on the canon of Western political philosophy as
interpreted by conservative intellectuals. The document’s introduction
referred to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the
Federalist Papers, Hayek, Friedman, Adam Smith, Max Weber, Émile
Durkheim, John Locke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Georges-Eugène Sorel,
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Charles Murray, and Niall Ferguson. Ryan
himself seemed intent on entering the canon. ‘Only by taking
responsibility for oneself, to the greatest extent possible, can one ever be
free,’ he wrote, ‘and only a free person can make responsible choices—
between right and wrong, saving and spending, giving or taking’ (Lizza,
2012, para. 34).
Within the context of a financial crisis the focus for the austerity program shifted from
factual debate over questions of the budgetary impact to a values debate celebrating the
virtues of liberty and personal responsibility. Despite the facelift, Ryan did not make
substantial headway legislatively – this time 12 Republicans attached their names to the
bill (Ambinder, 2010). However, despite being legislatively held at arm’s length by the
Republican congressional leadership, Rep. Ryan’s stature was elevated by the contrast he
was drawing with President Obama who cautiously extended an olive branch at the

70
January House Republican retreat stating: “I think Paul, for example, head of the Budget
Committee, has looked at the budget and has made a serious proposal” (Calmes, 2012,
para. 13). Three days later budget director Peter Orszag reversed course for the White
House and:
dismantled Ryan’s plan, point by point. Ryan’s proposal would turn
Medicare ‘into a voucher program, so that individuals are on their own in
the health-care market… seniors would have to pay thousands of dollars
more a year for health care (Lizza, 2012, para. 36)
Whatever the intention, Obama’s positive comments regarding Ryan’s budget and then
the point-by-point refutation of the proposal had the effect of elevating Ryan among
conservatives as he came to personify the opposition to President Obama’s economic
policies. Amidst the rise of the Tea Party the Ryan budget received a lukewarm reception
among the House Republican leadership. However, former House Majority leader Dick
Armey, heading the Tea Party organization Freedomworks, threatened Republicans
would suffer electorally if they didn’t “get some courage” (Allen, 2010, para. 1) and
support Ryan’s plan. They did not, but a new cohort of Republicans were about to enter
Congress and were asked to take a position on the Ryan budget which former Governor
Sarah Palin had just endorsed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed (Palin, 2010). Former Vice
President Dick Cheney commented: “I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on” (Epstein,
2011, para. 2). Moreover, Paul Ryan was chosen to deliver the response to President
Obama’s State of the Union address, codifying his budgetary approach as the new center
of the Republican Party.

71
Ryan introduced The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise in April
2011 after Republicans had secured the majority in the House of Representatives with 81
new members – many of whom had never before held public office and rode the Tea
Party landslide to victory (Topaz, 2014). In 2011, when the Path to Prosperity budget
proposal was released, the economy had somewhat improved and the unemployment rate
was 9% (“National Unemployment Rate, 2017). It is thus apparent that the same
budgetary proposals that had been proposed as a solution for an excessively big state
were now proposed as an appropriate solution to an economy facing a lingering economic
crisis. While the thrust of The Path to Prosperity was in line with his previous budgets,
there were significant differences. The new budget discarded the voucher program for
Medicare for current seniors and the privatization for Social Security, but Ryan stressed
this was not out of a change of heart ideologically but purely political pragmatism: “‘I
had to pass a bill—I had to get two hundred and eighteen people,’ he told me. His
original Roadmap ‘was just me, unplugged’” (Lizza, 2012, para. 39). However, what the
budget gives back on Medicare (for seniors 55 years or older at the time) and Social
Security it takes from Medicaid, food stamps, heating assistance for the poor and so on:
“states would have to pay substantially more for their Medicaid programs or tightly
constrain spending for those programs; and spending for federal programs other than
Social Security and the major health care programs would be reduced far below historical
levels” (“Long-Term Analysis,” 2011, p. 4).
The discussion of Path to Prosperity centered primarily on its actuarial integrity
and the accuracy of its budgetary assumptions, and only secondarily, on the ethical
implications of its upward distribution of wealth. That is, the budget was evaluated on its

72
own terms – whether it would deliver as promised and not whether what was promised
was justifiable.
The first major problematic assumption identified in the budget was the prospect
that all discretionary spending including defense spending should be reduced to 3.5% of
GDP: “levels comparable to those during the Coolidge administration — even as the US
presumably maintains a post-isolationism-level military force. Riiiggghhht. This is just
ridiculous” (Krugman, 2011c, para. 4-5). Martin Wolf (2011a) wrote: “Assume, for
example, that all spending on all the non-defence areas in the ‘residual’ would be 1.5 per
cent of GDP in 2050. Then defence spending would be a mere 2 per cent of GDP. Is this
a Republican plan?” (para. 11). This number was not prominently featured – or
contextualized – in the presentation of the budget, nor was there any explanation for how
such reductions would even be possible in the budget itself. In fact, in the scoring of the
budget by the Congressional Budget Office, this complete lack of detail was emphasized
by the nonpartisan body:
That combination of other mandatory and discretionary spending was
specified to decline from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in
2021 and then move in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in
2022, which would generate a further decline relative to GDP. No
proposals were specified that would generate that path. (“Long-term
Analysis,” 2011, p. 10-11).
The second more deceptive aspect to the budget that was immediately seized upon by
multiple econobloggers was the financing mechanism. That is, The Path to Prosperity
budget linked to an outside estimate of the growth from the implementation of the budget

73
done by the Heritage Foundation suggesting the budget would produce an unemployment
rate of 2.6%. Writing for the Free Exchange blog for the conservative newspaper The
Economist Ryan Avent (2011) immediately blogged: “It's an assumption, in other words,
that's unrealistic enough to be considered somewhat bizarre. Everyone puts a positive
spin on their policy proposals. But fundamentally worthy policies shouldn't need to
promise laughably overoptimistic outcomes to win support” (para. 4). Mark Thoma
(2011a) on his blog Economist’s View described the Heritage Foundation analysis as
having: “apparently ridiculous assumptions” (para. 1). The blog of the private research
firm Macroeconomic Advisers whose clients range from governments to major
corporations discussed in their review of the budget that outside estimate thusly:
There were actually two sets of results. The first showed… the civilian
unemployment rate falling a stunning 2 percentage points, a decline that
persisted for a decade. (This path for the unemployment rate is labeled
“First Result” in the table.) The decline in the unemployment rate was
greeted — quite correctly, in our view — with widespread
incredulity. Shortly thereafter, the initial results were withdrawn and
replaced with a second set of results that made no mention of the
unemployment rate, but not before we printed a hardcopy! (“The
Economic Effects”, 2011, para. 8)
While it may not be apparent for non-academics until the last sentence, the whole
paragraph is very harsh in its tone, but the terms “stunning” and “widespread incredulity”
gain potency given that they appear in a context in which language is typically selected
so as to insure that it is understated and forgettable. Paul Krugman (2011a), as is usually

74
the case, pulls no punches in his reaction to the Heritage Foundation’s decision to erase
their estimate without comment: “Yep — they took the offending number out. I mean,
really, guys — this is all over the blogosphere; did you really think you could get away
with pretending it was never there?” (para. 4-5) and “right there in the document was a
link telling everyone to go read that simulation; this was an integral part of the sales job,
part of the proof to the faithful that this was a ‘wonk-tested’ plan” (Krugman, 2011g,
para. 4). Driving the point home through visual contextualization, Krugman attached the
following graph of how historically unprecedented 2% unemployment is under the
caption: “here’s the forecast for unemployment (the red line at the right) in the context of
the historical record: Except briefly during the Korean War, the United States has never
achieved unemployment as low as Ryan and co. are claiming” (Krugman, 2011b, para.3).

75
Krugman, P. (2011b). Civilian Unemployment Rate (UNRATE).

One indication of the way in which the econoblogosphere came to a consensus is
evident in the way advocates for Paul Ryan’s earlier plans and early defenders of Path to
Prosperity reversed course once the math behind the assumptions had been laid out and
disseminated. The influential data journalist behind the Wonkbook at The Washington
Post Ezra Klein (2011a) wrote:
Just over a year ago, I wrote a column praising Rep. Paul Ryan’s
Roadmap. I called its ambition ‘welcome, and all too rare.’ … I defended
Ryan against accusations that he was a fraud, and that technical mistakes
in his tax projections should be taken as evidence of dishonesty. I also, for
the record, like Ryan personally, and appreciate his policy-oriented
approach to politics. So I believe I have some credibility when I say that
the budget Ryan released last week is not courageous or serious or
significant. It’s a joke, and a bad one. (para. 21)
Similarly, Jacob Weisberg (2011) withdrew his initial praise of Ryan’s budget as
“honest:”
I got pummeled in the liberal blogosphere for asserting that the Ryan
budget represented a big step in the direction of conservative honesty. I
deserved some of the abuse. Though I criticized Ryan for his unsupported
rosy assumptions (shame on you, Heritage Foundation hacks), I reacted
too quickly and didn't sort out just how laughable Ryan's long-term
spending projections were. (para. 2)

76
What is notable here is that it was the same two arguments about the plausibility of the
assumptions behind Ryan’s budget – questions of fact - that penetrated the
econoblogosphere and swayed earlier defenders. With the notable exception of Martin
Wolf (2011), what is absent from the debate is any discussion of what the world would
look like if discretionary spending was cut by 75% and Medicare reimbursement maxed
out at 32% (Baker, 2011) or, given the history of the lead-up to the financial crisis, who
should bear the burden of budget cuts. The Path to Prosperity is continuously evaluated
on its own terms – whether it produces the effects it claims, not what the moral status of
those effects are.
While most of the discussion of The Path to Prosperity concerned the realism of
its budgetary assumptions, the integrity of Paul Ran as the author was also a theme. The
mocking of Ryan centered on the incredulity with which mainstream press treated his
character as expressed through his budget, labeling both as courageous, serious, bold and
calling him a politician with expertise. These characterizations – and Ryan’s status as
expert – were roundly mocked with Krugman describing him as: “a stupid person’s idea
of what a smart person sounds like” (Krugman, 2011p, para. 1), an author of “crude
nonsense” (Krugman, 2011d, para. 2) and “flim-flam” (Krugman, 2011h). However, the
more common insult was satirizing Ryan’s depiction as being serious and honest;
journalist James Fallows (2011) called him “The Brave and Serious Mr. Ryan,” which
became a joking meme adopted and shared by the econoblogosphere. Paul Krugman
(2011e), citing John Cole, writes: “The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-
frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I
mention it is serious? The math demands it!” (para. 7). Krugman (2011f) also invents the

77
moniker VSP (Very Serious People): “people still can’t believe that such a thing is
possible — that there must have been some substance there, that the whole cadre of Very
Serious People couldn’t have been taken in by an obvious fraud. But I remember when”
(para. 1) above an attached picture of Colin Powell holding up a vial at the United
Nations.
The unifying theme of the invective and mockery against Ryan and his defenders
was his technical acumen and predictive accuracy, making the ad-hominem arguments
part of a credentialing debate concerning who should and should not be trusted on
economic theory and policy. The invective was not directed against the values embodied
by his budget that would fundamentally alter the social compact and diminish any sense
of public accountability for the pain felt by those suffering from the ongoing recession.
A critical reception by the budget among trained economists could very well have
occurred without the econoblogosphere, but blogging as a medium differs from the
informal talks that are given at universities in two respects. The first is technological in
nature – the initial estimate from the Heritage Foundation was archived and shared
widely online by blogs within hours of its release and remained accessible even after the
Heritage Foundation removed it. Furthermore, the visual representations of the argument
in the blog posts made the case accessible and credible to non-economists. Second, these
blog posts provided non-expert journalists with an informed resource for evaluating
proposals within hours of their release and before a media narrative has completely taken
hold.

78
Debt ceiling debate of 2011
Subsequent to the presentation of The Path to Prosperity budget, a new and
unprecedented economic policy question emerged: what would happen if the U.S.
Federal Government did not raise its debt ceiling? This question became relevant because
for the first time in history, the decision by the U.S. Congress of whether or not to raise
the debt ceiling became controversial (prior debt ceiling crises were standoffs in which
nobody disputed the consequences of breaching the debt ceiling). The debt ceiling is a
statutory limit imposed by the U.S. Congress on how much the U.S. Federal Government
can borrow to finance existing obligations incurred statutorily by the U.S. Congress
(“Debt limit,” 2017). Failing to raise the debt ceiling when the U.S. Department of the
Treasury has exhausted its borrowing capacity would mean defaulting on existing debt
obligations and/or failing to provide essential services that are also statutorily required.
Since 1979 it has been common practice to follow the “Gephardt rule” (Wallach, 2013) in
which an increase in the debt ceiling is automatically attached to any new budgets being
passed. However, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2011
decoupled passing new spending bills and authorization to borrow for the same bills as
they saw the debt ceiling as an opportunity to enact the austerity agenda embodied in The
Path to Prosperity.
The unprecedented nature and enormous stakes of a default on U.S. debt
associated with the impending debt ceiling led to widespread concern and arguments in
the econoblogosphere concerning exactly what repercussions could be expected. Three
separate sets of effects were identified as consequences. The first and most immediate
consequence would be: “sharp cutbacks in spending, which would undermine essential

79
services, not to mention derail the economy... it would be ugly indeed” (Krugman, 2011i,
para. 2). Mark Thoma (2011b) concurred and elaborated:
If politicians fail to reach a deal to increase the debt ceiling, there would
be a large fall in federal spending. The decline in federal purchases of
private sector goods and services would reduce aggregate demand, and
this could slow or even reverse the recovery (it could also threaten the
delivery of critical services that some people depend upon). (para. 3)
That is, because the economy at that moment in 2011 was still in a precarious state and
demand-deficient, breaching the debt ceiling would amount to de-facto austerity, as
social security checks and so on would not be sent out, further reducing economic output.
A second consequence concerned the role that U.S. Treasury Bills play in
assuring international financial stability. J. Bradford DeLong (2011c), who was Deputy
Secretary of the Treasury in 1995 when House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich similarly
threatened to breach the debt ceiling, couched this uncertainty in a discussion of the
consequences should there be no safe harbor for capital outside the United States:
interest rates on United States Treasury bonds could spike, or they could
remain stable, as investors decide they have other problems to worry
about. Or the US Federal Reserve, the Peoples Bank of China (PBC), or
both – or even some other body – could support the market (para. 2).
Other econobloggers were less sanguine, with Mark Thoma (2011b) expressing much
less uncertainty about the likelihood and impact of higher interest rates on U.S. debt:
Failure to raise the debt ceiling could also undermine faith in the safety of
US Treasury bills. If we default on bond payments, or appear willing to do

80
so even if it doesn't actually occur and investors lose faith in US Treasury
Bills, they will begin demanding higher interest rates to cover the
increased perception of risk. This could be very costly. We depend upon
the rest of the world to finance our debt at extremely low interest rates. If
the willingness of other countries to do this diminishes, then the cost of
financing our debt would rise substantially.” (para. 3)
Paul Krugman (2011i) concurred, and expanded the argument to consider effects
outside the United States, explaining that international finance depends on U.S.
government debt: “T-bills are the universal safe asset, the ultimate collateral. That’s why,
during moments of financial stress, the interest rate on T-bills has actually gone negative.
Make that safe asset suddenly unsafe, and it might cause vast disruption” (para. 4).
Nonetheless, Krugman conceded that it was uncertain whether a brief breach of the debt
ceiling would be calamitous: “It’s true that nobody really knows what effect failure to
make full payment on the debt will have. It could produce calamity, or it could be
contained, with borrowing rates for the private sector barely affected” (Krugman, 2011j,
para. 1). Ezra Klein and Dylan Matthews (2011) considered the prospective default of
U.S. debt on the international financial system:
too scary to consider for any serious length of time. Treasury securities sit
at the base of the global financial system. They are considered so safe that
the interest rate on Treasuries is called the ‘riskless rate of return,’ as the
market assumes there is no chance of default under any circumstances.
Almost all other types of debt — mortgages, credit card, auto loans,
business loans, hospital bonds, etc. — are yoked to Treasuries. Almost all

81
major financial players hold substantial portfolios of Treasuries or
Treasury-related debt in order to buffer themselves against financial
shocks. Consider that the 2007 financial crisis was caused by the market
realizing it had to reassess the risk of bonds based on subprime mortgages.
If the market has to reassess the risk of Treasuries, the resulting financial
crisis will be beyond anything we’ve ever seen in this country. (Klein &
Matthews, 2011, para. 6)
A third consequence outlined was the adverse effect on perceptions of the stability of
U.S. political system, which increases the cost of issuing new debt.
When you look at the US [sic] fiscal position in terms of what we’re
capable of as a nation, it’s not a big problem. Never mind those big
numbers you hear about implicit liabilities; we have a big economy, too.
So modest tax increases and reasonable efforts to limit health care costs
could bring our long-run finances into line. But all this depends on our
having the political will and cohesion to do what’s necessary. What if it
turns out that we’re a banana republic, with crazy extremists having so
much blocking power that we can’t get our house in order? And failing to
raise the debt limit could be widely read as a signal that we are, in fact, a
banana republic (Krugman, 2011i, para. 6-8).
Although some of the outlined consequences were uncertain, there was unanimous
agreement that breaching the debt ceiling would be bad; the only question was precisely
how severe the consequences would be. Klein and Matthews (2011) outlined a best-case
scenario in which interest on U.S. Treasury Bills was paid at the expense of domestic

82
services: “The drop in demand, when coupled with the turmoil in the markets and the
general financial uncertainty, would undoubtedly throw the economy back into a
recession” (para. 5). DeLong (2011) who pointed to the uncertainty yet who also painted
the rosiest best-case scenario wrote: “we should not be doing this. Doing things that have
unknowable and quite possibly disastrous consequences is the very definition of
stupidity” (DeLong, 2011b, para 31). Mark Thoma (2011e) considered it: “lucky if they
don’t wreck the economy over the debt ceiling” (para. 6). Paul Krugman (2011j)
analogized the best-case scenario to the situation the nation faced in 1937 when President
Roosevelt stopped the WPA and New Deal programs prematurely and the economy
reentered recession:
if the government is forced to slash spending when the money runs
out…this will have a huge negative impact on the economy. We’ll be
doing a 1937 squared. I hope and pray that Obama’s lawyers discover that
the 14th amendment solution is valid after all. Because otherwise we’ll be
looking at very dire things, even if the markets stay calm (para 2-3).
As was the case with the ongoing debate concerning The Path to Prosperity
budget, there was no shortage of ad-hominem arguments and insults directed at those
who were taking the nation to the brink of crisis. Mark Thoma (2011c) pointed
specifically to the Republican Party as: “threatening to blow up the economy if they don’t
get budget cuts big enough to blow up the economy” (para. 10). He further declared after
Republicans announced that tax increases were not up for negotiations: “This is about the
size and role of government, it has very little, if anything, to do with the debt” (2011d,
para. 10). Martin Wolf (2011b) characterized the decision to breach the debt ceiling as

83
“insane” (para. 7) and singled out Republicans who he alleged: “enthusiastically desire a
default. Either they have no idea how profound would be the shock to their country’s
economy…or they fall into the category of utopian revolutionaries, heedless of all
consequences (para. 8). Noah Smith (2011a) likewise put the responsibility squarely on
Republicans:
Much of the real damage has, it seems to me, already been done…And the
events of this debt ceiling crisis have brought new information to light that
will deeply shake investors' belief in the creditworthiness of the U.S.
government. In particular, one piece of information is crucial above all
others. This is the fact that the Republican Party is willing to seriously
entertain the option of a sovereign default (para. 2-3 [italics original]).
Smith (2011b) later attached a picture of an elephant stampeding a car, writing after the
U.S. Treasury Bonds lost its triple-A rating: “Whether it's debt-ceiling brinksmanship or
irresponsible deficit spending, the Republicans own this downgrade” (para. 28).
However, what is different in the discussion of the debt ceiling from The Path to
Prosperity is that much derision is also heaped upon President Obama for giving into
blackmail. Brad DeLong (2011a) at first sends a missive towards Washington D.C. writ
large: “You Washington politicians and pundits may think that the debt ceiling is just
more insider dingbat kabuki, and that nobody outside Washington is paying any attention
and it is not doing any damage. You are wrong” (para. 16-17). He then places blame
squarely on both Congress and the White House: “Shame on Boehner. Shame on
McConnell. Shame on Obama.” (2011b, para. 20). Similarly, Krugman (2011k) terms
Obama’s role in the debt ceiling negotiations: “complete intellectual surrender” (para. 2),

84
and then declares: “Please, just let me play poker with President Obama. I’ll make
millions in no time at all” (2011l, para. 1). In each case the invective was as a result of
perceived recklessness and political malpractice putting the entire global economy in
danger over political brinksmanship. While most of the outrage was directed at the
Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, President Obama’s permissiveness to
engage in a debate over the full faith and credit of the United States implicated him as
contributing to this reckless moment.
The nature of the arguments in the debate over the debt ceiling shared many
features with that of the debate over The Path to Prosperity budget. First, the central
questions – what happens when the debt ceiling is breached and why – were empirical, or
empirically verifiable. Moreover, the arguments were deliberative in the sense that they
were future oriented, rather than historically contextualized or embodied in a narrative of
political mythology. Finally, the vilification which did take place was on the basis of
needless risk-taking rather than political ideology per se – presumably Democrats holding
the full faith and credit of the United States hostage in exchange for higher child care
subsidies would elicit a similar reaction.

Sequestration and the Budget Control Act of 2011
To avert the debt ceiling crisis, the U.S. Congress passed into law an increase of the debt
ceiling along with a series of spending cuts in a bill titled the Budget Control Act of 2011.
The bill increased the debt ceiling immediately by $400 bn. and $2.1 trillion in total
while also mandating a $1.2 bn. cut to domestic spending spread evenly over nine years
starting in 2013 and split evenly between defense spending and discretionary domestic

85
spending (Khimm, 2012). The spending cuts were automatic caps across a variety of
categories, leaving no discretion for legislators to minimize damage done by meeting the
spending targets through alternative distributions of spending cuts. This inability to
reduce damage through the budget sequester was written into the law by design as: “The
indiscriminate pain is meant to pressure legislators into making a budget deal to avoid the
cuts” (Khimm, 2012, para. 4), or in the words of Jonathan Chait (2013): “sequestration is
bad and painful policy by design” (para. 7 [italics original]).
This form of indiscriminate spending cut designed to maximize damage to the
economy, is identical to the first risk component of breaching the debt ceiling – reducing
demand in an already demand-deficient economy. This form of austerity was thus
equivalent to the debt default scenario, but without the risk to international financial
stability or higher interest rates. Mark Thoma (2011b) in anticipation of the exact
outcome of the Budget Control Act and sequestration compared that outcome to austerity
enactments in Europe:
If the immediate budget cuts are large and poorly targeted, the resulting
impact on the economy could threaten the recovery. Those who favor
large and immediate cuts argue that the increase in the confidence of
investors will more than compensate for the decline in demand, but
experience with austerity in Europe substantially undermines this
argument. Austerity has made things worse in Europe, not better (para. 5-
6).

86
Brad DeLong (2011d) quantified his estimate of the damage to the economy from back of
the envelope calculations: “A first guess: -0.4% off of fiscal 2012 real GDP growth, with
an unemployment rate in November 2012 0.2% above the baseline” (para. 1). More than
just the assessment of economists themselves basing their concern on standard textbook
economic theory, the market itself by priced U.S. debt cheaply – thus not showing
concern about deficits – but hedging against substantial growth. Paul Krugman (2011o)
cited the reaction of markets to show how the preoccupation of concerns by the market
did not correspond to the views of those who advocated austerity: “We’ve been utterly
preoccupied with deficits, deficits, deficits; there was supposedly a crisis looming…And
here we are, with markets now deeply worried not by deficits but by stalling growth,
fearing not fiscal profligacy but fiscal austerity” (para. 2-3). Ezra Klein (2011b) cited a JP
Morgan report calling the projected U.S. economic decline as a result of the sequester a
“policy induced slowdown”:
Growth is weak and policymakers are hurting rather than helping. The
debt-ceiling debate hurt… And the expected austerity in both the United
States and Europe is going to hurt even more. JP Morgan notes that one
reason they think the United States might tip back into recession is that in
the first quarter of 2012, there will be ‘an automatic tightening fiscal
policy if, as our US team currently assumes, this year’s fiscal stimulus
measures will expire. (para. 4)
These arguments are thus not just abstract textbook models, but set up a falsification
standard for both austerity economics and mainstream macroeconomic theory – the
theory of austerity suggested higher growth would result from spending cuts, but market

87
reactions to the debt deal ran counter to that premise and instead supported the
mainstream Hicks IS-LM model of macroeconomic theory.
As in the other arguments examined, advocates for austerity were subjected to
scorn and ridicule throughout the discussions. In the case of sequestration and the Budget
Control Act of 2011, however, the scorn was also heaped on President Obama for
justifying and defending the agreement. At the announcement of the deal and publication
by the White House of the fact sheet Paul Krugman (2011m) only attached a link to the
fact sheet with the title “Barack Obama, comedian.” Two hours later Krugman (2011n)
wrote: “It’s much, much too late for Obama and co. to say ‘Trust us, we know what we’re
doing. My reservoir of trust is now completely drained. And I know I’m not alone” (para.
5). Mark Thoma (2011e) also dismissed the president’s courage and competence: “The
administration hasn’t figured out that it’s supposed to lead – that sometimes it’s supposed
to move public opinion instead of following it” (para. 1). Brad DeLong (2011e) linked
the issue to the White House’s controversial position on Libya and concluded the
president was not forced to accept austerity: “It is better than default would be—but
default was never in the cards, at least not with lawyers at the president’s disposal 10% as
inventive as those who claim that we are not engaged in ‘hostilities’ in Libya” (para. 3).
The extent to which this political analysis on the blogs unfairly maligns President Obama
is debatable and relies on counterfactuals regarding what would have happened if the
president announced he would only sign a “clean” increase in the debt ceiling without
strings attached. It is worth noting that a year later precisely such a scenario unfolded in
which the president offered no concessions in exchange for raising the debt ceiling and
Congress did raise the debt ceiling. However, this was right after the 2012 presidential

88
election and an ascendant moment for Democrats, while the summer of 2011 was in the
middle of Republican momentum as they had just won a landslide midterm election and
the president had rhetorically embraced austerity in his humble 2011 State of the Union
address. It is also possible the trillion dollar coin legal argument could have been legally
upheld by a conservative Supreme Court if Republicans refused, but President Obama
has recently revealed he was advised about lawsuits from bondholders and is still
skeptical it could have worked (Bryan, 2017). In any case, regardless of the merit of this
criticism of President Obama, what is significant here is that it is made in the context of
criticism of austerity. As noted, the target for the abuse shifted from Republicans to
President Obama, but so did the nature of the attack: Republicans were attacked for their
technical incompetence whereas President Obama was attacked for his naivety and
perceived lack of courage.
Conclusion
Trench (2008) argues that one consequence of the Internet as a source for
information and deliberation has been that the boundaries between science and non-
science have been eroded. This chapter suggests that for the field of economics this is
true only to the extent that the chief characteristics of science are formality, pretense of
objectivity and passivity and prescriptive publication standards. If science – in this case
the “hardest” of the social sciences – at bottom is about argumentation based on a clash
of falsifiable claims, warrants, and a positivist epistemology the econoblogosphere is
more scientific than peer-reviewed publications. The econoblogosphere offers both an
honest and reflexive exchange of arguments, and permits the admission of self-aware
scientific arguments rooted in humor, metaphor and stories. Each blog post is a part of a

89
continuing dialogue with interlocutors showing readers changes in evidence, positions in
ongoing arguments alongside highly personal details like pictures of cats, holiday photos
or new homes. This presents a change in the rhetoric of economics argumentation in the
fullest sense of the word as considered by Deirdre McCloskey who argued that the
writing conventions of economics journals rendered the authors invisible vessels for the
truth, and that this was a substantive feature of the arguments themselves. The personal
nature of the blogs highlights the identity of the authors and frames the rhetoric as
argumentative exchanges between people as opposed to passive presentations of
evidence.
Cumulatively the econoblogosphere constitutes a platform for economic policy
argumentation in which a narrative took hold that mainstream economic theories were
distorted by incompetent, naïve and dishonest political rhetors. In this repeated
representative anecdote, a gullible mainstream press corps misinforms the public about
the true nature of the economic crisis, as well as the relative intellectual merit of
academic economists and pundits. This conception of the technical sphere is one that sees
it as having been colonized by pseudoscience, which is then transmitted back to the
public through seemingly reputable and jargon laden studies. The diagnosis of the issue,
of which the rise of austerity economics is a symptom, is one of an information problem:
if only the public had the correct information about austerity, so the anecdote goes, the
public support for austerity programs would dissipate. Although there is no basis for
drawing a causal inference between these top ranked bloggers’ consensus and the
consensus established earlier, the reach of the blogs and academic stature of their authors
within their respective fields suggests that the blogs facilitate a circulation of arguments

90
that are at the very least highly visible to the field as a whole. Moreover, the way in
which deception, or at the very least deeply implausible assumptions, was identified
within hours of publication suggests that the blogosphere has a role in discrediting
pseudoscientific claims in the area of applied policy making when it matters rather than
retrospectively. Finally, the acerbic form of a lot of these arguments is likely not
representative of other subfields in which the stakes for immediate policymaking are
different and political tribalism plays less of a role. However, what is notably absent is
the treatment of economists as interlocutors in this way – the tribalism comes to fore only
when econobloggers discuss political candidates and opinion editors.
Despite the overwhelming consensus against austerity in the econoblogosphere,
this consensus – much to the chagrin of the econobloggers themselves – did not penetrate
the public discussion of the policies. To understand how the public deliberated over these
issues, the next chapter will compare how elected officials rhetorically constructed the
same set of policies and how the nature of the arguments differed from those examined
here.

91
Chapter Four: A Purifying Drama: Public Deliberation of Austerity Economics

“Asked about rising government debt, Pope Benedict XVI has said: ‘[W]e are living at
the expense of future generations … in untruth. We live on the basis of appearances, and
the huge debts are meanwhile treated as something that we are simply entitled to.’ It is
immoral for governments to make promises they cannot fulfill. Budgetary discipline is a
moral imperative.” Paul Ryan (2011a).

This chapter presents a complementary account of the austerity arguments made on
behalf of the same set of policies examined in the econoblogosphere, and then offers a
dramatistic analysis of public austerity arguments. I argue that the public support for
austerity economics is best understood through the lens of dramatism. Specifically,
austerity economics enacts a moralized symbolic hierarchy in response to the disruption
to the existing “Order” brought about by the financial crisis, and resulting in debt and
“Guilt” which can be morally purged through the redemptive act of austerity. The form of
austerity arguments lends itself to dramatism in that the argumentative frames are at least
in part about the past rather than the policy effects austerity will bring and are non-
falsifiable values-based discourse.
I have chosen to use the three Sunday morning political shows – NBC’s Meet the
Press, ABC’s This Week and CBS’s Face the Nation – to illustrate the mediated public
debate over austerity. I selected these shows because they feature the key actors--political
parties send their most senior and prestigious members to these shows, the participants
are well prepared with talking points to frame the debate in the direction their party
desires and thus represent what the party leadership desires the wider public debate to
look like. Finally, unlike a prepared press statement or editorial these interviews are
interactive and thus reflective of the clash between arguments for austerity and what the

92
press considers the most viable counter arguments. I supplement the arguments presented
on the Sunday shows with prepared statements by Paul Ryan who became the de-facto
leader of the austerity movement and personified the Republican budget. I examine the
introductory video presentation of The Path to Prosperity budget developed by Paul
Ryan’s office featuring how he framed the beginning of the legislative push for austerity
in the period examined as it set the path for austerity arguments and other prepared
statements accessible from his website.
I begin by returning to the austerity debates from the previous chapter, but this
time focus on the themes that unfold in the deliberations of the political representatives as
they are reported on mainstream mass media outlets. I revisit the dramatistic concepts by
contextualizing the financial crisis in the context of Order and then examine the themes
explored from the public austerity debate in terms of Victimage and Redemption. Finally,
I conclude with an assessment of the dramatistic appeals.

The Path to Prosperity
Paul Ryan’s third iteration of his budget, The Path to Prosperity, succeeded in
winning his Republican colleagues’ support where the previous versions failed
spectacularly. Part of this explanation may be the significant change in who those
colleagues were, an explanation favored by Ryan himself:
‘Usually, you get local career politicians who want to be national career
politicians…They’re more cautious. They’re more risk-averse. They’re
more focussed on just reelection…This crop of people who came up are
doctors and dentists and small-business people and roofers and D.A.s.

93
They’re not here for careers—they’re here for causes’ (Lizza, 2012, para.
45).
However, this is at best a partial explanation given that only four Republicans voted
against the budget proposal this time while only 12 voted for the previous iteration
(Ambinder, 2010; Lizza, 2012). Some amount of persuasion occurred along with the new
political dynamics. One way to gauge how Ryan changed his rhetorical approach to
austerity is by analyzing the content of the rollout of the new version of his budget. Four
themes emerge from Ryan’s own presentation of his new budget: that austerity is a
technocratic and defensible approach reviewed and supported by non-partisan experts,
that debt from excessive spending rather than insufficient taxation is the defining threat
facing America, that austerity represents intergenerational fairness, and finally that
poverty relief demeans the poor.
The most obvious place to begin is Paul Ryan’s YouTube presentation of his
budget uploaded the day the budget was released. In this professionally edited video,
Ryan begins by warning the audience: “we face a crushing burden of debt”
(HouseBudgetCommittee, 2011) against the visual backdrop of an uncited graph
projecting a debt to GDP ratio of 344% in 2050 - nearly five times higher than the 2011
ratio of 70% - while somber string music plays in the background. Ryan, pointing to the
projection on the screen while looking straight into the camera, continues:
Actually I asked the Congressional Budget Office to model the economy
going forward, so they have these computer programs that simulate the
U.S. economy. The computer program crashes in 2037, because it can’t
conceive of any way in which the U.S. can continue because of this

94
massive burden of debt. You know the economists tell us, when your debt
gets to 90% of your economy, you start slowing down and we stagnate
(HouseBudgetCommittee, 2011).
There are four things worthy of examination in this statement. The first is the general
theme of debt incurred as a burden necessitating austerity. This may seem obvious, but
previous iterations of the same budget that preceded the crisis were also a solution, but to
a different problem of excessive government that constituted: “a statist attack on free
communities” (Lizza, 2012, para. 56). The specifics of the claims regarding what the
CBO said are also worth exploring in greater detail. The first is the claim of the CBO
projecting the status quo resulting in a literally incalculable disaster as the computer
simulations break from the debt calculations. This is more than hyperbole, because it is
premised on a continuously worsening future recession necessitating continuously
increasing efforts to stimulate the economy. Dean Baker responds to this claim by
analogizing: “This one is same category as shouting, ‘If you keep going like this, you're
going to end up the Pacific Ocean’ to someone headed west from New Jersey, ‘It is
absolutely true, but in an absurd way.’” (Jacobsen, 2011, para. 16). A different sleight of
hand is the claim that “the economists” say that at a 90% debt to GDP ratio the economy
stagnates. This claim is based on a paper authored by Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff
(2010) who warned of a threshold at a 90% debt to GDP level, after which economic
mayhem would occur. Although the paper’s methodology was criticized immediately
after its release, it was canonized in public policy discourse after being widely cited not
just by Ryan but also Olli Rehn – then European Commissioner for Economic and
Monetary Affairs and the Euro – and the editorial board at The Washington Post

95
ultimately leading the paper to “have had more immediate influence on public debate
than any previous paper in the history of economics” (Krugman, 2013d). However, when
a graduate student tried to replicate the study he discovered that the findings were the
result of a series of Excel spreadsheet errors which, when corrected, revealed there was
no magic 90% debt to GDP threshold. Finally, Ryan uses second person plural pronouns
in the video referring to “your debt” and “your economy,” but says the consequence is
that “we stagnate” using first person plural pronouns, suggesting disassociation from
incurring the debt and personalizing the government debt held by the public.
In the second part of the video, the music changes to strong uplifting music while
projections for federal debt under The Path to Prosperity - in which the country never
approaches the dangerous 90% drop-off point - are presented. Ryan asks: “so how will
we do it?” and answers, “we will cut spending” while emphasizing every word
(HouseBudgetCommittee, 2011). The culprit for the spending and debt crisis is identified
next in the declaration that, “Washington’s unsustainable spending is driving the nation’s
permanent plunge into debt” and “Washington has not been telling you the truth.” Ryan
sets up a binary between “government” explicitly and through the metonym Washington
and the people who stand to benefit from “reformed” spending on entitlement programs
which he promises “saves and strengthens these programs. It fixes the flaws in Medicare
and Medicaid” (HouseBudgetCommittee, 2011.) Ryan closes the video by making an
intergenerational argument that by adopting his budget “We can lift the crushing burden
of debt off of our children and grandchildren” (HouseBudgetCommittee, 2011.) What is
most notable about this second video is what is absent – nowhere is there a discussion of
who the beneficiaries of the distributional consequences of the budget are, it merely

96
presents the beneficiaries as average Americans relying on entitlement programs and
future generations. Moreover, the video sets up a binary condition in which the only two
choices are the complete destruction of America or The Path to Prosperity. The cuts to
provision of services are simultaneously presented as “fixing a flaw” that strengthens the
program and the solution to the debt crisis, but nowhere is it made clear that the reforms
amount to providing less care, rather they are simply presented as a reduction in
amorphous “government.”
As the budget was released and presented for public debate on the Sunday show,
the frame for contestation was the budget’s political viability consistent with Gulati, Just
& Crigler’s (2004) claim concerning the prevalence of the political strategy and “game
frame.” The premises behind the budget ridiculed on the econoblogosphere, however,
were not contested, and in fact outright granted by the moderators, for example This
Week’s Christiane Amanpour:
Congressman Paul Ryan, certainly not one to fiddle around the edges of
the financial crisis confronting this country. This week, he unveiled a
sweeping budget proposal to cut $6 trillion from the budget over 10
years… Is he a visionary or is he a villain? Whatever your point of view,
one thing is not in dispute, Ryan's plan will drive this epic debate.
Congressman Ryan has put forth a budget that many people are saying is a
good attempt to deal with this [debt] (“SHUTDOWN,” 2011)
Of course, Ryan did not specify where the cuts would be made, or how
discretionary spending could conceivably be reduced to the levels of the Hoover
administration, nor is it clear who the “many people” refer to or what their qualifications

97
to assess the budget are. Amanpour in a separate segment praises Ryan’s credentials and
expertise “Ryan's presentation is earnest and, it must be said, wonky” (“‘This Week’
Transcript: Rep. Paul,” 2011, para. 52). In the one moment where Amanpour pushes on
the plausibility of Ryan’s budgetary assumptions by saying: “People who've been
studying your numbers very carefully and -- have been saying that the numbers don't add
up” (‘This Week’ Transcript: Rep. Paul,” 2011, para. 98), Ryan answers: “Well, the
Congressional Budget Office Says they do” (‘This Week’ Transcript: Rep. Paul,” 2011,
para. 99). Of course, the CBO said no such thing – Ryan instructed them to adopt
assumptions he specified and which they in their letter subtly made clear were unrealistic,
but nowhere in the segment is that communicated to the audience. Instead, Amanpour
accepts Ryan’s claim the CBO endorsed the validity of his assumptions. What remains is
a successful mainstreaming of austerity through its presentation as being “serious” and
correct in its empirical description of reality, even if its policy prescriptions were up for
debate.
Despite the fact that the cuts to Medicaid and Medicare exempt current seniors
and only apply to those 55 years and younger, on Meet the Press Ryan is still able to
frame the these cuts as a form of intergenerational charity to future generations:
This plan using CBO numbers gets the debt paid off so our children--you
and I are the same age with the same age of children--we want to give our
children a debt-free nation. That's what this plan does. I think that's what
the country wants, they want growth, they want a debt-free nation, they
want government to begin living within its means and stop spending

98
money we don't have. (“Meet the Press transcript for April,” 2011, para.
16)
Of course, to the extent the assumptions behind the budget are accurate in terms
of reducing the debt, the reductions are not achieved through austerity by current seniors
but from dramatic reductions in provisions of government services to future generations.
Despite this, Ryan frames the existing debt levels as sinful excess by the current
generation at the expense of our children: “We're giving our children a lower standard of
living” (“Meet the Press transcript for April,” 2011, para. 100)
A different argument in favor of austerity forwarded by Ryan is that it is
incumbent upon him as a Catholic to practice his faith through his work on the U.S.
Federal Budget. Based on the social teachings of the Catholic Church, Ryan advances
two reasons why austerity is actually enacted for the benefit of the poor. Ryan
approvingly quotes Pope Benedict’s encyclical “Caritas in Veritate” as to why
eliminating federal anti-poverty measures ends demeaning the poor: “solidarity without
subsidiarity ‘gives way to paternalist social assistance that is demeaning to those in need.’
Our budget gives more power over federal anti-poverty dollars to the states” (Ryan,
2011a, para. 8). Ryan elaborates on the psychological benefit to the poor of reducing or
ending anti-poverty programs: “The dignity of the human person, said Blessed Pope John
Paul II, is compromised when bureaucratic ways of thinking — which he dubbed the
‘welfare state’ or ‘social assistance state’ — dominate our lives with heartless regulations
and impersonal rationing” (Ryan, 2011a, para. 10). Second, Ryan states that: “Our budget
helps the poor, first and foremost, by promoting urgently needed economic growth and
job creation” emphasizing the empirical belief in austerity that cuts promote growth. The

99
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops did not share Ryan’s theological
interpretation and condemned his budget in an open letter, calling the cuts in the budget
to food stamps “unjustified and wrong” (Easley, 2012, para. 13).

Debt ceiling debate of 2011

The widespread opposition to raising the debt ceiling featured two mutually
exclusive arguments. The first approach was to treat the debt ceiling as alarmism in
service of perpetuating government excess, while the second approach was to frame the
fallout from failure to raise the debt ceiling as pain necessary to convince the public of
the evils of debt. Brown (2011) reports that while framing the debt ceiling as needless
alarmism: “once flourished on only the conservative outskirts of economic circles, [it]
has seeped into the mainstream in recent weeks, gaining broader acceptance among
establishment Republicans” (para. 3). For instance, Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ)
remarked: “It’s absolutely silly. We have plenty of cash flow to pay debt, which means
I’m trying to figure out how credibly the administration can keep using that language”
(Brown, 2011, para. 9). Nor was the opposition to raising the debt ceiling isolated only to
fringe figures in the party – all of the leading contenders for the Republican candidate for
president at the time endorsed the position:
Michele Bachmann believes it’s all a hoax. Tim Pawlenty told an Iowa
crowd, “I hope and pray and believe they should not raise the debt
ceiling.” Ron Paul based his first presidential ad on a call to not raise the
debt ceiling, proclaiming “No Deals.” And Rick Santorum has said that

100
raising the debt ceiling should be avoided until a Balanced Budget
Amendment to the Constitution is passed (Avlon, 2011, para. 4).
Invariably the denial of the ramifications of raising the debt ceiling was also intrinsically
tied to the supposed ramifications of increasing debt levels. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC):
“we're not going to default. And if you listen to your previous guest, he
said we won't meet some obligations, but he didn't say we were going to
default. I don't want to put the country through that, but the fact is
Republicans and Democrats have been irresponsible. They've brought our
debt to the point where we literally can't borrow much more money
without bankrupting our country… we've got to draw a line in the-- in the
sand now, because the day of reckoning is going to come. And the longer
we put it off, the bigger the problems are going to be for our country”
(“Meet the Press transcript for July,” 2011,para. 75-77).
No support was offered for the claim that the U.S. Federal Government was unable to
borrow additional money – in fact the interest rate on U.S. debt at the time was at a near-
record low suggesting that the market was indeed very willing to lend the U.S. Federal
Government more money – but the legal authority to borrow the money required by the
U.S. Congress was what was missing and threatening default. In this way, the Senator
DeMint used his own opposition to raising the debt ceiling as proof the U.S. would be
unable to borrow the requisite funds. By stating the debt levels and not the congressional
approval to borrow was the source of threat of default DeMint thus blurred the threat of
the statutory debt ceiling with the U.S. debt levels per se, merging the two as one threat
when in fact they were quite distinct. This blurring was aided by the presentation of the

101
issue and graphics, as the opening for This Week on April 24, 2011 began: “This Week, a
ticking time bomb. All eyes on the exploding national debt” with the graphic “Debt
Crisis” running across the screen (“‘This Week’ Transcript: Timothy,” 2011, para. 1). Of
course, debt was not exploding, nor was it a bomb – the danger inherent in the system
was entirely political rather than from investors refusing to buy debt or from a sudden
spike in the interest rates or the share of public debt owned by foreign investors.
A different – and mutually exclusive – argument for breaching the debt ceiling
was offered by Rep. Deven Nunes (R-CA). Whereas the preponderance of arguments in
favor of breaching the debt ceiling minimized its adverse effects, Nunes argued that the
pain inflicted on the public was the purpose of breaching the debt ceiling: “‘By defaulting
on the debt, in the short and long term, it could benefit us to go through a period of crisis
that forces politicians to make decisions on major policies that affect the budget” (Allen
& Sherman, 2011, para. 24). The current Director of the Office of Management and
Budget Mick Mulvaney, who was at the time a Congressional Representative from South
Carolina, was asked if he was willing to risk defaulting on the U.S. debt. He replied, it
was “worth it to ‘force a discussion’ about spending.” (Jilani, 2011, para. 2). Two years
later Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) also advocated for the U.S. to “default to force a
conversation about the national debt” (Jones, 2013, para. 3), telling David Fahrenthold
(2013): “‘I think we need to have that moment where we realize [we’re] going broke,’
Yoho said. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, that will sure as heck be a moment” (para. 29).
For all three, there is no path forward without inflicting pain, as the solution is to
convince the public that debt is and should be painful.

102
Sequestration and the Budget Control Act of 2011

Three main themes surrounded the austerity arguments in favor of the Budget
Control Act as the resolution to the debt ceiling debate. The first is the continuation of
debt as an existential crisis and the root of all problems, the second is the necessity of
pain in the form of the austerity contained in the Budget Control Act, and the third is
defining the deal as balanced and a compromise because it raises the debt ceiling. Paul
Ryan’s official reaction on his personal House website to the deal was to consider it
praiseworthy both in content and in what it signaled: “the Budget Control Act marks a
major change in the culture of spending that is driving our nation to the brink of a debt-
fueled economic crisis” (Ryan, 2011b, para. 1). Government spending and debt as
understood by Ryan is not merely a policy response to a recession or disagreement over
macroeconomics, but a question of cultural disagreement where restraint and willingness
to impose and endure pain as enshrined by the austerity in the Budget Control Act is
morally superior.
As discussed in more detail in the preceding chapter, the passage of the Budget
Control Act raised the debt ceiling. This good news that the shutdown was averted was
tempered when the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. Treasury Bonds
as a direct result of the brinksmanship shown by Republicans in the negotiations and their
willingness to default (Goldfarb, 2011). As a result, the Budget Control Act and
downgrade became the top stories discussed at the Sunday morning shows, and
Christiane Amanpour pointedly asked Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT): “the Tea Party
successfully used default as a weapon, publicly bringing us to the brink of catastrophe
before pulling back… Is there, do you think, an overstepping of -- of the boundaries?”

103
(“‘This Week’ Transcript: S&P’s”, 2011, para. 93). Chaffetz’ answer is indicative of the
overall theme of attributing wrongdoings to debt generally, and identifying the
perpetrator/agent uniquely as political insiders in “Washington, D.C.”:
No, I - well, I think we're exemplifying the idea that Washington, DC,
doesn't understand that we have a debt crisis. This wasn't about the debt
ceiling. It's the fact that we have a debt crisis. I argued back in 2007 that if
we're going to continue to be the world's economic and military
superpower, we're going to have to change the way we do business. It's
about fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability and a strong
national defense. And I wasn't the only one who got here because we
espoused those principles. So in many ways, we're going to try to vilify
those that are pointing out what those of us in the heartland already know.
We're spending too much money (“‘This Week’ Transcript: S&P’s”, 2011,
para 94).
The downgrade in debt, and resulting adverse consequences for the public, is thus laid at
the feet of “Washington’s” predilection for incurring debt despite Standard & Poor’s
explicitly stating it was due to the “political brinksmanship” over the debt ceiling.
Incredibly, despite Chaffetz incorrectly disputing the premise of Amanpour’s question,
Amanpour responds: “Correct, and debt is now established as a conversation” (“‘This
Week’ Transcript: S&P’s”, 2011, para. 95). On Face the Nation Senator Lindsey Graham
(R-SC) repeats this position: “if we'd listened to the tea party we'd have $4 trillion
reductions in debt over time and not been downgraded. No, the tea party has come to
Washington talking about reducing spending. Thank God they're here.” ("'Face the

104
Nation’ Transcript, August,” 2022, para. 34). On Meet the Press, Alex Castellanos
repeats this frame, that Standard & Poor’s downgraded U.S. debt not because of the
brinksmanship S&P explicitly provided as their rationale, but instead because of long-
term growth trends in the amount of U.S. debt:
when you look at what these rating agencies are all saying, Standard &
Poor's or not, is that we can't continue to maintain an unsustainable level
of debt. And these Republicans in the Congress are saying how can you
grow an economy when you have to service an unfathomably growing
amount of debt? And so they put their foot down on that (“Meet the Press
transcript for August,” 2011, para. 69).
Castellanos then went on to praise the sequestration aspect of the Budget Control Act, not
because it relieved economic suffering for Americans, but explicitly because it increased
their suffering:
this is not going to be without pain. There's a reason alcohol, drugs, and
promiscuous government spending are all addictive. They feel good at
first. When you stop doing them, it's going to feel less good…Republicans
out there politically are saying, ‘Take the pain now. Don't pass it on to the
next generation.’ That's why they're being so firm (“Meet the Press
transcript for August,” 2011, para. 118-121).
Austerity focuses the pain on the current generation who voted for debt and thus spares
the innocent children who did not. This becomes an intergenerational argument over
austerity – somebody must take the pain, and the children do not deserve it.

105
In addition to the centrality of debt as existential crisis and the just distribution of
pain, the third notable aspect to the framing of the Budget Control Act is that proponents
insisted it was a compromise despite the fact that no tax increases had been approved,
only government spending cuts. Then Speaker of the House of Representatives John
Boehner (R-OH) framed the issue as: “The president has said now, for once, that he
wants a balanced approach. Well, guess what?...he does get a balanced approach…He
gets his increase in the debt limit of $2.4 trillion. What we get are real cuts in spending”
(Hendin, 2011, para. 4). Sen. DeMint also used this framing on Meet the Press: “Well,
David, we certainly are willing to compromise. We're willing to give the president an
increase in the debt limit” (“Meet the Press transcript for July,” 2011, para. 59). In other
words, avoiding defaulting on the debt is a “give” by proponents of austerity to the
president that they would have rather avoided. On ABC’s Face the Nation the moderator
George Stephanopolous also adopted this line of reasoning: “this is just a framework of a
deal…not a final deal at all, but it's designed to get each side its bottom line. The
President gets an extension of the debt ceiling through the election, about $2.4 trillion”
(“This Week Transcript: David,” 2011). Republicans in other words successfully pursued
a framing to appear moderate and reasonable in the middle of a demand to default on
U.S. debt as evidenced by this example where their position framed the moderator’s
supposedly objective introduction of the topic to the public.

Burkean Dramatism
As mentioned in the introductory chapter, current studies that have sought to
explain the rise of a politics of austerity suggest that it has been caused either by the

106
disproportionate political power of elites who favor a smaller state and lower taxes, or as
a result of misinformation by mainstream political news outlets suggesting pseudoscience
is “wonky,” “serious” or “correct.” Both explanations have merit. This study seeks not so
much to subvert the notion that misinformation was prevalent or that it mattered, or that
key actors used austerity as an ideological tool well aware it was not a meritorious
economic theory. Nonetheless, the claim on behalf of austerity as a principle to guide
public policy had intrinsic argumentative appeal. This appeal did not derive from
particular syllogisms or classical logical fallacies, but from morality. Dramatism
foregrounds the moral order such policy enacts and thus complements the dispassionate
empirical analysis offered by economists. The central Burkean dramatistic terms through
which a symbolic hierarchy must advance are Guilt, Victimage and Redemption (Burke,
1954). Dramatism is thus useful to reveal the moral underpinnings in austerity economics
left unaddressed by empirical analysis, and to help us better understand why bad social
science might still make effective politics. Unlike his contemporaries who criticized Nazi
rhetoric as untrue and abhorrent, Kenneth Burke presciently warned in his critique of the
“vandalistic” reviews of Mein Kampf that: “there are other ways of burning books than on
the pyre” (Burke, 1973a, p. 191). For Burke and rhetorical critics following in his
footsteps, understanding the persuasive dynamics of the speech underpinning public
policy is essential, using the analogy that we must know what kind of medicine it is “that
we may know, with greater accuracy, what to guard against” (Burke, 1973a, p. 191).
Merely inflicting symbolic wounds on the advocates of austerity will not do: austerity has
gained too much public prominence and wrought too much pain for it to be blithely
dismissed as crackpot economics or mere craven propaganda.

107
From Order to Disorder: The 2008 Financial Crisis

Many books and countless articles have described the buildup to the 2008
financial crisis, each tracing it back to separate time periods and attributing a unique set
of causes and responsible agents (Lewis, 2010; McLean and Nocera, 2010; Stiglitz,
2010.) While the financial position of many governments and portfolios of banks,
corporations and investors may in reality have been less than sound in the years leading
up to 2008, people’s perceptions of their economic status and the general distribution of
economic resources are the basis for the existing social order. That is, people and
governments based their perceptions of their status and place in the social order on what
was widely thought to be the economic conditions at the time, even if those projections
were inaccurate. Although social order in Burkean terms is often only equated with
hierarchy, it is that and more. Burke (1954) writes that his sense of order is “not just
regularity” but also hierarchy, suggesting the stability of the economic system and its
classes should also be understood as order (p. 276). Order in the sense of regularity is
parallel to what macroeconomic modeling terms equilibrium – the intersection of the
long-term aggregate supply, the short-term aggregate supply and aggregate demand. At
this particular balancing point, the status quo is resistant to change absent external
shocks, and the economy works at full capacity with full employment (minor transitional
unemployment is the norm under these conditions.) At equilibrium any change internal to
the system itself is automatically corrected – excessive supply is automatically scaled
back because aggregate demand has remained unchanged and so on. The equilibrium
point in macroeconomics is prized and celebrated the way order is for Burke; it is

108
“natural” and the proper baseline against which other conditions are affectively judged as
inferior or out of place.
The order predating the financial crisis was thus disrupted in two distinct ways by
the crisis: the regularity of the existing economic distribution of status and goods was
disrupted (a persistent disequilibrium emerged), and the economic positions that
individuals, corporate entities and sovereign nations confronted had deteriorated (save for
a very, very few investment bankers who shorted the housing market). The financial
crisis thus disrupted the financial hierarchy for individuals within the U.S. (and
elsewhere) as homeowners found themselves not as owners of valuable assets, but net-
debtors. However, it also brought disorder on an international level as countries engaging
in aggressive monetary policy printed more treasury bills, effectively indebting
themselves to foreign borrowers – the most prominent example of which is the growing
share of U.S. treasury assets held by the People’s Republic of China contributing to a
change in the balance of power between the two countries.
19
These two separate
disruptions are connected, however, as the order and hierarchy to which individuals
belong is legally subsumed under a different hierarchy - that of nation states under which
individuals and their hierarchies are subservient. Most individuals in the U.S. and many
other Western nations thus experienced personal financial losses at the same time as the
nations to which they belonged experienced similar losses. This parallel change in the
hierarchies of citizens and nations caused by the disorder of the financial crisis thus
intuitively invites a comparison between the individual and collective experiences,
discussed in the next section.

19
See e.g. Edward Prasad (2010)

109
The financial crisis, by conservative estimates, cost the U.S. economy between
$6-14 trillion (Luttrel, Atkinson & Rosenblum, 2013). This collective economic loss of
status was not matched by other rival nations like the People’s Republic of China (which
successfully took a distinct anti-austerity approach to dealing with the global financial
crisis, see for instance Barboza, 2008) prompting a relative reordering of the international
relations hierarchy. Unlike most studies using a Burkean understanding of disruptions to
order, this disorder cannot be attributed to guilt inherent to the system from individuals
(or nations) refusing to accept their relative position in the hierarchy (though this may be
revealed by or through the disorder), but an exogenous shock, or external event
prompting a revision of the social order.
Of course the demonization of government spending and notions of wasted
resources is not a new phenomenon, and thus neither is public support for less
government spending in the abstract. Calls for government spending reductions – in
particular, but by no means exclusively – on welfare, housing support, and food stamps
have been perennial tropes in Republican campaign rhetoric spanning decades as
exemplified by President Reagan’s oft repeated anecdote of the welfare queen.
20

However, two factors separate austerity as an economic doctrine from generic appeals to
cuts in government spending. The first is that austerity requires economic conditions of
crisis in terms of widespread unemployment, a fall in demand from a drop in business
investment, housing construction, and consumer demand. The second is that cuts in
government spending are justified not on the grounds that resources are wasted in

20
However, as described in the second chapter Republican opposition to government spending is
inconsistent, e.g. government spending under President George W. Bush’s presidency increased by more
than the six presidents preceding him (de Rugy, 2009).

110
bureaucracy or that they create perverse incentives (for instance unemployment benefits
dis-incentivizing employment), but that it is in essence a miracle cure for the crisis
because sharp drops in government spending will produce business confidence and
investment (what Paul Krugman [2010] has derisively called the “confidence fairy”).

Debt as Guilt

The emerging depth and persistence of the economic disorder presented an
opportunity for advocates of austerity to implement not just an economic agenda (and
thereby a new economic order) but to impose a secular moralizing through public policy
by identifying guilt and victimage. While it is now beyond dispute that many households
and financial institutions were overleveraged, having as much as 40 times as much debt
as assets or paying only a symbolic down payment on a large mortgage, the claim of
government indebtedness is more complicated. After the crisis U.S. government debt
increased dramatically as a result of purchasing bad debt from the banks either directly or
indirectly, but also from lower tax revenue and higher spending on unemployment
insurance and so on (Blyth, 2013). The reason this distinction is crucial is because
different types of indebtedness are often conflated, as stories of individual and corporate
indebtedness stand in for society and government writ large.
These representative anecdotes centered on both government and individual debt
levels being caused by an overindulgent appetite for debt and consumption by those that
could ill afford it. On an individual basis, this characterization is epitomized by CNBC
editor Rick Santelli’s “rant” against “loser homeowners” who caused the crisis by
spending more on housing than was fiscally prudent, a discourse widely accredited with

111
spurring the Tea Party movement (Bedard, 2010). The debt of the U.S. government was
similarly portrayed as a consequence of profligate spending, exemplified by vice-
presidential candidate and chairman of the House Budget Committee Ryan who
described how “Our fiscal crisis is above all a spending crisis that is being driven by the
growth of our major entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid”
(“Lifting the Debt, Rejecting Decline,” 2011). Both of these characterizations are to
varying degrees deceptive. The great financial crisis certainly was not a singular cause
event driven exclusively by household debt accumulation (see, for instance, McLean and
Nocera, 2010; Stiglitz, 2010), even if that was a contributing factor. The second
statement made by Ryan is a more important sleight of hand, because as pointed out by
Mark Blyth (2013) this leaves out the single most important factor – the assumption of
private debt by the public through government bailouts amounting to a “politics of
making it appear the state’s fault such that those who made the bust don’t have to pay for
it” (p. 12).
While Kenneth Burke (1973a) emphasized the negative as the ultimate source of
guilt, as individuals are embarrassed by their position in the symbolically derived
hierarchy, Nietzsche (1989) derives guilt from debt. Nietzsche claims that whereas guilt
was initially conceived as debt to prior generations, it became a debt to Gods and
subsequently a crucial component of Judeo-Christian religious thoughts about man’s
relationship to God. Even later, debt came to possess a secular monetary connotation, but
here Nietzsche claims the remnants of the moralizing religious connotations of guilt are
still present. Nietzsche makes his case in part by deriving debt etymologically by
comparing the original German terms: “Have these genealogists of morality up to now

112
ever remotely dreamt that, for example, the main moral concept ‘Schuld’ (‘guilt’)
descends from the very material concept of ‘Schulden’ (‘debts’)?” (p. 39). Though the
words for debt and guilt are different in English, the cultural connotation is preserved
linguistically in that debts are not cancelled or neutralized, but “forgiven” in the same
way a sin or guilt is expiated rather than cancelled out. Given that debts are examples par
excellence of negatives (it would be as difficult to find a debt in nature as it would be to
find the square root of negative one), the two conceptions of guilt are not mutually
exclusive, but the specificity of Nietzsche’s approach lends itself to a dramatistic
understanding of why debt in and of itself is polluted with guilt. Irrespective of a debtor’s
position in the social hierarchy, s/he is guilt-ridden because in the creditor-debtor
relation, the debtor is guilty of incurring the debt to the creditor.
It is perhaps understandable why individual debt is perceived as a moral failing if
it is a result of irresponsible financial decisions, but the public debt functions very
differently. Though much has been made about the size of the U.S. debt, it is clear from
public debates that this concept is little understood. The majority of the U.S. debt is held
by other Americans, which means that if the U.S. is conceptually understood as a family
unit, it is a debt owed to itself, not to others or outsiders (Grier, 2011), and for every
dollar of debt owed by the U.S. to foreigners, the U.S. owns 89 cents of foreign debt
(Krugman, 2012). Of course, these nuances are not emphasized in public debates about
the national debt – indebtedness is sin, even if for a society it is to itself. Even though
individual debt levels differ, citizens of the U.S. share a governmental debt and thus share
in the categorical guilt that is not “the result of any personal transgression, but by reason
of a tribal or dynastic inheritance” (Burke, 1954, p. 278).

113
This socialization of private debt is a theoretically interesting example of Burke’s
idea of socialization of loss because unlike Burke’s example of the church exploiting the
need for people to absolve their guilt by sharing it collectively, transferring considerable
and quantifiable debt from private to public balance sheets also entails a distinct material
self-interest beyond moral absolution (Burke, 1941). Moreover, unlike original sin and
man’s inherent need for purgatory rituals, the public need for absolution for fiscal
profligacy is an invented sin that did not predate the decision for the government to
assume private liabilities. In this sense, socialization of loss is not only a ritualistic
symbolic enactment by institutions wishing to expiate feelings of guilt, but a political
strategy capitalizing on transfers of not just monetary liabilities, but also sin.
Absolved from the burdens of sin of indebtedness, investment banks saw no need
to engage in mortification or other purgative redemptive discursive acts. In fact,
investment banks like JP Morgan Chase were free to rhetorically resume the position of
virtuous social contributor exemplified by CEO Jamie Dimon’s testimony before the
Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee explaining how important JP
Morgan Chase is in aiding the economic recovery: “We can bank companies in 40
different countries … We can do five billion-dollar revolvers … Or raise money for
America’s Fortune 100 companies in a day or two, if they need it to do something … We
are the largest banker, to banks….” (“A Breakdown in Risk,” 2012).
Given that what is socialized is not mere feelings of guilt, but property, the
socialization process interacts with another Burkean concept: Mystification. Burke
employs the concept of mystification generally as a concept to explain the legitimation of
social inequality, it functions as a sort of symbolic shroud of fog that prevents people

114
from realizing the illegitimacy of class structures, in order to preserve existing
hierarchies. The mystification is achieved often through transcendence and identification
indicated by a change in the personal pronouns:
Along these lines, here might be the place to track this aspect of the
rhetorical situation down to its most succinct form. Thus: surely first prize
for the vagaries and vagueness of identification must go to that tiny first
person pronoun, "we." A few years ago, when the Dodgers won a ball
game, all Brooklyn proudly proclaimed that "we" had won. Now this
purely private corporation is in Los Angeles, operating on a quite different
identification. "We" as a nation advance funds to foreign countries from
which "we" as private business enterprises receive money back in payment
for exports. By this ambiguity of identification, as a nation we become
"idealists" while some of our nationals are involved in transactions that
are, to say the least, quite realistic. Or whenever "we" fight a war, the
range of identifications under the one head extends from men in combat to
Wall Street gamblers who make a killing in war stocks (Burke, 1973b, p.
271-272).
Of course, in the case of austerity economics it is not ownership of property but debt that
is mystified. Private profligacy, in the case of reckless gambles gone wrong by the
financial sector, becomes public sin, as the government must atone for sins committed by
the financial sector at the same time as the benefits are privatized. The combination of
mystification and socialization of loss combine to describe the process whereby private

115
debt becomes public, and private guilt turns into shared and socialized public guilt. Mark
Blyth (2013) describes the process as follows:
We have turned the politics of debt into a morality play, one that has
shifted the blame from banks to the state. Austerity is the penance – the
virtuous pain after the immoral party – except it is not going to be a diet
that we all share. Few of us were invited to the party, but we are all being
asked to share the bill (p. 13).
Mystification, in other words, explains why we have become willing to pay a bill for a
party we were not invited to attend.
Austerity as Victimage

Given the ubiquity of guilt both on the individual and collective basis through
debt accumulation there is a corresponding “urge to purge” – which Paul Krugman
(2013a) defines as the: “Urge to see depression as a necessary and somehow even
desirable punishment for past sins.” Austerity economics is a perfect dramatistic solution,
if ill-advised economic policy, because it promises not just to restore the economic order
– bringing the macroeconomy into equilibrium – but to do so in a way that cleanses the
sins which gave rise to the disorder in the first place. Austerity makes no promises of an
easy transition to a new order, of a pain free policy to alleviate the severe economic
destitution felt by millions of households – on the contrary, it promises pain as the most
economically vulnerable in society are deprived of heating assistance during cold winter
months and the hungry are denied food subsidies. The idea is that the pain is necessary,
because only through pain can the sins of the past be washed away. A pain-free solution,
exemplified by Keynesian economics which proposes for the government to bring the

116
economy back to equilibrium by alleviating the suffering of the poor through increased
government spending, amounts morally to going on a cupcake diet as a reaction to having
eaten too many pastries. Such a reaction is an affront to the moralized framework of debt
in which sins have to be atoned for and guilt has to be redeemed through victimage, not
more guilt.
Burke contrasts two different vehicles for victimage – mortification and
scapegoating. Austerity policies may well fit both bills depending on what party
implements them and where they are implemented. Austerity was often framed as
mortification – elected officials representing the body politic of the nation itself admitted
to excessive indulgences in the past and sought to implement the policies on the same
body in recognition of past sins: “The politician wants to repent (or at least be seen to
repent), and atone for past sins…after deficit bias, we have austerity” (Wren-Lewis,
2013). Of course, the officials speaking of the necessity and virtue of economic pain –
what Krugman terms the “pain caucus” are unlikely to rely on food stamps for nutrition
and heating assistance to keep warm. However, in a Burkean view, the officials identify
“government” or “Washington, D.C.” – of which they are a part and which represents
everyone – as guilty and express mortification on their behalf. This is the case even if the
individual legislators disown their own guilt or responsibility.
That advocates of austerity policy require pain as sacrifice for past sins as
opposed to merely seeing cutbacks in spending as a financial necessity is exemplified by
ruling out tax increases on billionaires who would not suffer appreciably on a day to day
basis from seeing a marginal tax rate comparable to the one in place during the 1990’s.
Such an approach to reducing the debt would meet the budgetary, but not moral liabilities

117
of debt. As is repeatedly made clear by multiple Republican advocates of austerity, the
pain imposed by austerity is not a regrettable side-effect, but a necessary part of the
strategy so that the public can learn from the past sins of debt. In other words, if you are
not imposing pain you are not doing it right – no pain, no gain. In Burkean terms, the
victimage has to match the suffering; if the pain is localized rather than widespread and
unable to cause actual destitution or desperation the moral cleansing is incomplete. That
the end sought by austerity policies is pain and sacrifice, rather than economic stability
and balanced budgets, is illustrated through polling on the issue of the debt ceiling which
shows that a “clear majority of Republicans think that (a) not raising the debt ceiling
would cause serious economic hard [sic] and (b) we should not raise the debt ceiling
anyway and cause that serious economic harm” (Schlesinger, 2013). In other words,
avoiding economic harm is not the goal, provoking it is.

Conclusion

The austerity program as articulated by Republicans successfully articulates a
moralistic narrative because it locates the Guilt polluting and violating the old Order and
it identifies a politically acceptable vessel for victimage that matches and suffers
proportionate to the Guilt felt by the public as a whole. In fact, one of the most brilliant
aspects to the dramatism of austerity is the way in which Republicans get to derive the
political benefit of mortification by suggesting the need for the current generation to
“take on” challenges and incur suffering to preserve prosperity for future generations
without themselves either acknowledging wrongdoing or suffering economically from the
austerity they propose. The actual people who pay the price of austerity are the poor at
the moment the legislation is enacted as well as future generations who have to live

118
without essential government services. In this sense, austerity is scapegoating wrapped in
mortification. The shifting of pronouns and use of metonymy provide austerity advocates
the symbolic means to take credit for bravely assuming responsibility while
simultaneously avoiding the guilt which they ascribe to “government” or “Washington,
D. C.” The nebulous nature of the metonyms “Washington, D. C.” and “government”
obscures who will be made to pay. However, since neither political actors nor citizens
personally identify as “Washington D.C.” or “government” the metonyms make fitting
symbolic scapegoats. Both the mortification and scapegoating are thus morally empty,
but symbolically powerful.
Moreover, this dramatistic rendering of austerity was enabled by an approach to
political journalism that is structured around creating two sides to issues and letting
Democrats and Republicans debate the merits of claims, while the moderators speculate
on the political strategy and viability of legislation rather than document which claims are
accurate and which are not. In fact, the false premises offered by the advocates of
austerity – that debt levels were “exploding” or that a “crisis” loomed – were used by the
moderators to introduce discussions leading viewers to consider these arguments as
settled issues beyond controversy rather than as pseudoscientific political propaganda.
The seemingly balanced approach by reporters is completely divorced from academic
consensus around the issue and at best presents mainstream economic theory as one of
the two approaches to the debt crisis.
Finally, the nature of the austerity arguments offered are rooted in and rely on
factual premises concerning both the future and the past that go uncontested – austerity
promises a future of economic salvation from past sins of overindulgence. In this regard,

119
austerity is fundamentally a theory belonging in the field of economics that can be
falsified mathematically. However, austerity arguments also form a moral case
concerning the ethics of spending, consumption and debt that cannot be falsified by
modern macroeconomics and that goes unanswered by academic economists.

120
Chapter Five: Recovery of Expertise: Use and Abuse of Economics in Public
Deliberation

“To do an analysis with any level of factual basis would be literally impossible” - White
House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on the effects of American Health Care Act (Fabian,
2017)

“To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize
power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is
spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.” – Timothy Snyder (2016)

This dissertation complements existing research on austerity in three ways. First, it offers
an alternative understanding for the successful rise of austerity arguments in the public
sphere. Second, this study of austerity rhetoric adds to existing scholarship on
manufactured scientific controversy by extending it to the field of social science and
considering it within the context of how media dynamics, political polarization and
dramatism structure public arguments. Third, the case of austerity also complements
rhetorical scholarship of economics in which technical economic theory is seen as an
anti-democratic impediment to public deliberation. I bring these arguments together in
this chapter, by assessing how expertise shaped public deliberation. I then consider the
dramatistic appeals of austerity as well as a path for intervention by public intellectuals in
manufactured controversies. I conclude by reflecting on the implications for democratic
deliberation with an assessment of present political circumstances.

Expertise in Public Austerity Arguments

The analysis of austerity arguments in both mass media and among economists
and data journalists in the previous chapters begs the question of the extent to which the
public deliberation was shaped by the arguments among economists. To shed light on this

121
question I compare the nature of the arguments presented, how austerity policy was
framed in both the econoblogosphere and for the public and the relative visibility of
expert consensus. At the most basic level, audiences of the prestige Sunday shows
looking for a mainstream assessment of austerity policies by academic economists did not
find it. In fact, on more than one occasion austerity advocates asserted that their policies
were backed by expert support and were well within mainstream economic thought. Paul
Ryan refers to “the economists” and CBO as institutional validators for a supposed expert
consensus in support of austerity, when in fact the consensus was in opposition to
austerity. This attempt to paint austerity as rooted in expert consensus worked, at least in
part, because it went unchallenged in explicitly argumentative settings such as Sunday
political shows where hosts are supposed to hold politicians’ feet to the fire. For example,
Christiane Amanpour’s introduction of Ryan’s budget as something “many people are
saying is a good attempt to deal with this [deficits ed.]” (“SHUTDOWN,” 2011) served
to validate his inaccurate factual claims concerning the Congressional Budget Office
(CBO) assessment and general consensus lends a bipartisan veneer to austerity and
reduces anti-austerity objections to predictable partisan objections by left of center
political advocates.
While this may seem like an insignificant example, as Ezra Klein (2013) points
out it is indicative of a larger phenomenon in political journalism:
The rules of reportorial neutrality don't apply when it comes to the deficit.
On this one issue, reporters are permitted to openly cheer a particular set
of highly controversial policy solutions. At Tuesday's Playbook breakfast,
for instance, Mike Allen, as a straightforward and fair a reporter as you'll

122
find, asked Simpson and Bowles whether they believed Obama would do
‘the right thing’ on entitlements -- with ‘the right thing’ clearly meaning
‘cut entitlements.’ (para. 4)
Advocates of austerity economics exploited the intellectual blind spots of journalists and
their inability to see through dishonest representations of economic research and the
desire to appear serious by mimicking Beltway consensus positions. It is “safe” for
moderators and mainstream journalists to incorrectly assert austerity policy is derived
from mainstream economic research because it is a non-partisan issue, and it is a non-
partisan issue precisely because it is treated as such by the very same journalists. By
definition, this makes anyone who would dispute these claims seem ideologically suspect
since such a challenge would cast doubt over the integrity of austerity advocates and
mainstream reporting.
Leah Ceccarelli’s (2011) argument that modern scientific denialism works by
falsely claiming a controversy exists in the technical sphere and thereby manufacturing it
into existence helps explain the status of austerity in the public sphere. In order to
understand how a manufactured scientific controversy successfully became the default
mainstream position in the public sphere it is worth comparing the arguments used in the
econoblogosphere and in the public sphere. In addition to misrepresenting and inverting
the consensus among academic economists on austerity, the debate on austerity in the
public sphere turned on a different set of arguments. That is, the basis for why austerity
was discredited in the econoblogosphere was never discussed or mentioned in the debates
on the Sunday political shows. To the extent that academic arguments against austerity
were published after the legislative debates occurred or relied on publicly inaccessible

123
mathematic modeling, journalists moderating debates could be forgiven; however, as
documented in the third chapter, this was precisely not the case with the
econoblogosphere which was accessible to a layperson and detailed the debate in real
time. The ludicrous nature of the assumptions behind the Ryan budget – namely that
government spending as a share of the economy could be reduced to the levels last seen
during the Calvin Coolidge administration – were simple enough to inform public
understanding of austerity and publicly available as the debate over austerity policy took
place. Similarly, the decision to scrub the projected unemployment rate of 2.6% is
indicative of Paul Ryan’s unwillingness to defend the basis for his own plan – likewise a
simple fact that would shed light on the merits of austerity for the audience. However,
advocates of austerity – including Ryan himself – were not confronted with any of these
substantive criticisms that were based in factual assessments of the budget itself, nor were
they presented for the audience.
While austerity advocates defended their policies as mainstream social science
and uncontroversial, an actual debate on austerity in the public sphere did take place, but
on very different terms. The way austerity advocates were challenged in interview
settings was on the political feasibility of their policies and specifically the prospects of
gaining political allies among centrists. Christiane Amanpour exemplified the nature of
the pushback against austerity when she challenged Jason Chaffetz on the political
extremity of using the debt ceiling as a weapon, but essentially conceded his factual
claim that excessive government spending was the root cause of the impending financial
threat (“‘This Week’ Transcript: S&P’s”, 2011). This typifies the rhetorical strategy
preferred by austerity advocates: Making erroneous empirical claims knowing they will

124
not be challenged on their substance and that the centrism they wish to claim is defined
through conformity to the political center rather than social-scientific consensus.
Unlike the manufactured scientific controversies over anthropogenic climate
change and evolution, the political center is not presumptively aligned with the scientific
consensus that advocates try to discredit. Rather, when the manufactured scientific
controversy is a part of the legislative agenda of one of the two main political parties the
political center is by definition the point equidistant between the two parties’ position on
a given issue. This feature obviates the need for austerity advocates to make use of the
types of arguments regarding a fair hearing to alternative viewpoints that Ceccarelli
(2011) examines in her analysis of HIV/AIDS, global warming and evolution. Because
the two sides of the controversy are attached to the two main political parties, the
controversy is framed in the same way all other political issues are: Along a continuum in
which the two parties differ in predictable ways. When austerity politics is analyzed
through this conventional political frame, adjudicating factual claims becomes difficult as
each side naturally sows doubt about the veracity of the other side – controversy over
austerity thus becomes a product of the partisan “he said, she said” dynamic of political
discussion in which the moderators are incapable or unwilling to adjudicate critical
factual claims without appearing biased. A telling example of this is when Amanpour
tried to push Paul Ryan on the substance by stating that unnamed “people” have said the
numbers don’t add up, to which Ryan simply and incorrectly replied that the CBO had
vouched for the numbers adding up without having to answer any follow-up questions
from Amanpour, who failed to point out the CBO had in fact publicly stated the opposite
(‘This Week’ Transcript: Rep. Paul,” 2011). Similarly, David Gregory affirmed Paul

125
Ryan’s claim that: “We want to move from talking about saving billions of dollars to
going on to saving trillions of dollars” (“Meet the Press”, 2011, para. 80) by saying “And
that's, indeed, what's in the substance of your budget.” (“Meet the Press”, 2011, para. 81)
despite the fact that the CBO claimed that Ryan’s budget would expand rather than
contract the deficit.
Austerity economics was rendered controversial by claiming the mantle of expert
backing rather than by discrediting the field of economics, the predictive capacity of
empirical social science or the uncertain possibility of ascertaining truth from a process
rife with inherently subjective methodological choices, where one economic assessment
may be argued to be just as good as the next. In this respect, the way in which
controversy was manufactured was different from when the technical sphere deliberations
are portrayed as being divided when in fact they are not. Rather, the weight and ethos of
expert social science was leveraged against the consensus reached by that very field by
referencing CBO models and “economists” writ large as supposedly corroborating the
technical bona fides of austerity. This cooption of venerable non-partisan institutions was
possible because the argument surrounding austerity in the public sphere did not turn on
the feasibility of the assumptions, methodological choices or any substantive discussions
of the details of the budget or other austerity policies. Rather, the argument turned on
stylistic enactment of dispassionate expertise, and what constituted the political center
and could feasibly be passed into law.
Taken as a whole, the austerity debates taking place among economists and on the
most prominent televised news shows were like two ships passing in the night. Not only
was the consensus among economists contested, rendering the relevant empirical

126
questions controversial, austerity was presented to the public as having the backing of
experts. Austerity was then rendered controversial as it entered the broader public and
transitioned from being a theoretical approach to economic policy with empirically
verifiable propositions to a political question sitting comfortably within a Democratic-
Republican frame in which the two political parties have opposing priorities and
objectives. To understand the failure of the expert consensus on the econoblogosphere to
shape the debate in public it is necessary to consider the refusal by academic economists
to engage the dramatistic arguments surrounding public arguments on austerity, to which
I turn next.
The Dramatism of Austerity

That calls for austerity persisted despite the overwhelming consensus against it in
the field of economics is taken as evidence by Sue Konzelmann (2012) that balanced
budgets or economic stability were never the overarching aim: “In the aftermath of the
2007/8 financial crisis… austerity no longer has the economic objective of
macroeconomic stabilization. Instead, it has become the objective itself” (p. 1, original
italics). Why austerity is the end rather than the means is of course a question that lies
outside the purview of the discipline of economics, but it is at the heart of a dramatistic
understanding of public policy. Stripped of intellectual bona fides and notions that cuts
are necessary for economic stabilization, austerity is revealed to be the end itself as
opposed to a policy remedy. While economically indefensible, the policy nonetheless
makes sense from the dramatistic perspective of seeking redemption from past economic
sins through austerity as victimage. Only by seeing austerity as a morality play rather
than an economic or public policy solution to an urgent problem can the public and elite

127
support for the program be explained. Moreover, the combination of mystification and
the socialization of loss is the process by which private debt becomes public sin made
visible.
Kenneth Burke was at pains to emphasize that his ideas of guilt, redemption and
order were not specific to the religious and cultural origins from which he adapted the
concepts, but also present in: “The Incunabula of the scientific or technological views
that are now so characteristic a part of it [culture]” (Burke, 1954). The austerity project is
a prime example of why social-scientific research and public policy pronouncements
contain elements of dramatism that explain why intellectually deficient ideas are
catapulted into the mainstream and come to dominate political agendas – at great social
costs. Of particular relevance are Burke’s thoughts concerning the need for science to be
supplemented by magic to affirm the emotional needs of mankind. Burke himself came to
rationally understand that lions belong to the cat family and are not, in fact, big dogs by
looking at their bone structure, but the incongruence and frustration he felt trying to
embrace this rational linkage at the expense of the emotional linkage was considerable,
and in his view instructive for why the translation of science into public deliberation
requires attending to irrational emotional linkages (Burke, 1954, p 72-3).
This issue is scarcely given much thought in the formulation of economic theory
or its translation into public policy. As a result, advocates of austerity economics
successfully exploited this exact lack of affective sensitivity toward the public sense of
order, rising to public prominence despite its fringe status in the field of economics by
privileging the emotional linkage of debt to the need for purgation. The response by most
reputable economists has been the economic equivalent of vehemently insisting that lions

128
are in fact cats and not big dogs with the end result of winning the argument amongst
economists, but losing the argument amongst voters. Justin Wolfers (2012) from the
University of Michigan’s Department of Economics remarked with incredulity:
I’ve never seen the disjunction between the political debate about
economics and the consensus of economists be as large as it is
today…Instead of having a serious discussion about how best to end the
current economic slump, Congress is gridlocked, as one of the major
parties is blocking every effort to improve the economy, using arguments
which are so far outside the mainstream that it is hard to find a single
economist to agree with them. (para. 9)
The disjunction Wolfers identifies is certainly worth lamenting as he does, but that does
little analytically to understand its origins or mitigate the efforts that continually recreate
it.
When Burke remarked that the scientific orientation was inadequate because it
denied people the means by which: “The sense of the unclean [can be] periodically
mitigated by purificatory rituals” (Burke, 1959, p. 208) he seemed more concerned about
science coming to dominate the public sphere in an unstoppable trajectory. However, the
case of austerity suggests that this rhetorical inadequacy of economics caused the field to
spur its own irrelevance to the public at the most critical hour, leaving the magic of
austerity to fill this position. Future research ought to consider how economics as a field
can address this deficiency for the benefit of its own public prestige and the general
welfare of society. There is no reason, after all, that austerity should have a monopoly on
magic or the purgation of sin. The case of Iceland’s response to its own economic

129
depression is instructive. Faced with a massive crisis Icelandic policy focused not on
cutting government expenditure by firing school teachers and emergency responders, but
by currency depreciation which made everyone in Iceland poorer – goods imported
became much more expensive overnight, and conversely Icelandic goods and labor
became cheaper. As Matt Yglesias (2013) explains:
Icelanders need to smelt more aluminum and catch more fish than ever
before, even while consuming less than ever in foreign imports...Belts
have to tighten. It's an all-around bad situation. But. Iceland's
unemployment rate is below five percent. The country is paying for the sin
of excess debt with the penance of hard work. Which makes sense. When
you discover you're less wealthy than you thought you were, the
appropriate response is to work longer hours to earn more money it's not
to quit your job. Longer hours and joblessness are both forms of
punishment, but longer hours is a punishment that fits the crime (para. 3-
4).
This type of economic policy manages to alleviate the worst form of human suffering
imposed by austerity, while still allowing for mortification, but a kind which is
productive both economically, morally and dramatistically. An appreciation that some
manufactured controversies are more than simply information problems for the public but
are in fact moral dramas changes the argumentative needs. In part, this may reflect the
application of manufactured controversies to social-scientific research. If such an
approach merits further attention, the issues on which controversies turn need not be the
same. Ceccarelli (2011) cautions: “When a good portion of the public believes the

130
skeptics…, or when the empowered decision maker embraces the dissenters…, then
ignoring the arguments of the critics means conceding the debate.” (p. 212). A similar
lesson emerges from the austerity: When a good portion of the public believes a social-
scientific claim to be a morality play, the economists who ignore the moral calculus
concede the debate to the advocates who see issues concerning debt and the state as
always moral in nature. Reconsidering manufactured controversies in the context of
economic policy also means understanding that the parameters for debates in media will
be different from debates about whether evolution or creationism is true because the
stakes are higher and the notion of trying to balance coverage of such deeply partisan
beliefs changes the nature of the media coverage.

Democratic Deliberation of Economics in the Age of Manufactured Controversies

Taken together, the two preceding sections present a conundrum – if it is the case
that the battle for public support on austerity is won or lost on non-falsifiable dramatistic
grounds, why does it matter if the factual grounding is accurate or represents the
consensus among academic experts? In the narrow sense of judging the consequences for
public support of the austerity program enacted in 2011, neither a different presentation
of the facts nor centering the debate around the same premises as the debate in the
econoblogosphere may have radically reduced public willingness to enact austerity. Issue
polling is methodologically difficult and public opinion involves more nuance than can
be captured quantitatively in a yes/no poll, but it is instructive to consider the case of
public support for the debt ceiling which shows that: “A clear majority of Republicans
think that (a) not raising the debt ceiling would cause serious economic hard [sic] and (b)

131
we should not raise the debt ceiling anyway and cause that serious economic harm”
(Schlesinger, 2013). This indicates a fundamental asymmetry in the debate over austerity
where opponents treat economic policy as a means toward the end of reducing
unemployment and related suffering while proponents treat benefit cuts as the end in
itself. To be clear, this polling is not representative of the American public at large, but is
reflected in much of the public pro-austerity rhetoric that treats producing economic
suffering itself as an indispensable part of policy making. There is no set of facts or
consensus on empirical aspects of austerity economics that - even if established within
the current political media landscape – could resolve this underlying dynamic.
Such a conclusion would seem to support rhetorical scholarship emphasizing the
centrality of frames in public arguments on economics, as all arguments are subjective
frames that work on different persuasive levels to shape public understanding of the
issues. While the evidence may merit such a conclusion, at least with regard to austerity
and social security reform (Asen, 2009); this must not be the final word on the judgment
of this particular rhetoric. Irrespective of fidelity to dramatism, not all frames are equally
truthful or accurate, and thus rhetorical critics should judge them differently. It is
particularly relevant to consider the relative accuracy, or at least attempted accuracy, of
economic rhetoric when analyzing it in the context of public deliberation in a democracy.
Much has been made of the risk of expertise stifling democratic participation by
colonizing the public sphere and rendering deliberative issues for public choice into
technocratic scientific questions. The present case study shows that it was the lack of
visible expertise that stifled the genuine public deliberation because the public was
deprived of the information necessary to enact its values. Manufactured scientific

132
controversy poisons the well of public deliberation, obviating any possibility of genuine
public choice or debate.
Reflecting on the case of austerity, it is a great irony that it was only in the
econoblogosphere – which is dominated by technical modes, norms and standards of
argumentation – that citizens had the opportunity to have their voices heard and to engage
in politics based on relevant and accurate premises. For all the fears of a technocratic
colonization of the public sphere, it was the removal of empirical questions, substantive
discussion and expert guidance in the public sphere that paved the way for the stifling of
public deliberation. Moreover, the future implications for democracy of such misleading
strategies that cast doubt over the facts and accepted theories in economic policy
discussions are captured in the introductory quotations to this chapter. My argument, of
course, is not that consensus positions in the field of economics are infallible or even that
the same level of certainty can or should be ascribed to conclusions in a social science, as
they should in a medical field like, for instance, immunology. Rather, the central question
for scholars of public argumentation is that if scientists’ judgments are sidelined in the
public sphere in order to elevate the power of the public to make decisions, what replaces
the role of expertise and how does that affect accountability and transparency? An
example of this occurring in the austerity debates is when Alan Simpson was pushed on
his claim concerning life-expectancy of low-income retirees and what the distributive
consequences of raising the retirement age would be and he simply replied: “‘If
you torture statistics long enough… eventually they'll confess’” (Klein, 2013, para. 15).
Such a rhetorical strategy exploits the public distrust of social science while shielding
some of the most powerful and well-funded drivers of public opinion from

133
accountability. By depicting all academic economic research as a prop or a ruse used to
support a neoliberal agenda as Hanan and Chaput (2013) do, public officials are cleared
to refuse to engage factual claims since the process by which facts are established has
been discredited. The political spoils of discrediting the potential for social science to
adjudicate relevant claims of economic policy go to the political actors least comfortable
with those facts.
It is also not inevitable that public discourse concerning economic policy should
be divorced from relevant research or factual claims and instead centered on non-
falsifiable discussions of the virtue of pain and the dignity of the poor. By simply
establishing that factual premises are not central to public perception of the issues of
economic policy without examining why that is the case or identifying the implications
the standards by which the public evaluate public discourse are naturalized. The
reluctance of the public to use factual evidence to evaluate economic policy is not a fact
of life, but a rhetorical achievement. The process of undermining economic expertise in
public economic policy debate is an outgrowth of harmful media practices as well as a
deliberate political strategy. In the austerity debate the Republicans enacted a form of
tactical Leninism – the worse things get, the better they are for us politically. They sought
to achieve their policy objectives by manufacturing a controversy over positions that
economists shared with an almost uniform consensus and by moving the goalposts onto
nebulous territory concerning the morality of debt and poverty.
For economic theory to aid the public in deliberation, then, the mode of
deliberation of both the public and economists must shift towards the other. Public
intellectuals should attend to the significance of moralistic frames through which the

134
public sees policy, but not abandon its role in assessing the veracity of empirical claims –
they would not serve the public by informing decision making if they were to merely
copy the non-falsifiable epideictic rhetoric from the public sphere. Similarly, to enable
genuine public deliberation the norms and standards in the public sphere should also
move towards explicitly evaluating the factual premises undergirding the larger claims
about the public good. The possibility of the econoblogosphere to serve as the interface
of these two different modes of argumentation remains as it captures real-time expertise
without sacrificing public accessibility.
Finally, I want to make a concluding remark on the political implications of this
research. From the case study of austerity it becomes apparent that academic economic
research, had it featured prominently in public deliberations, would have served to
discredit legislation that widened economic inequality and produced significant economic
deprivation. However, the conflation of economics as a field of social-scientific inquiry
with capitalist or neoliberal policy advocacy has prevented the political use of a credible
academic consensus by the political left. The discrediting of economic theories as a tool
of capitalism or the political right has thus not redounded to the benefit of the political
left.
Moreover, while the present case study reflects poorly on the Republican
congressional leadership, my conclusion is not that either their lack of integrity or an
industry funded public relations effort is the essential explanatory factor in how austerity
came to prominence. There is a long history of how the economic policy debate in the
public has come to be dominated by economic theory that distributes earnings towards
the wealthiest members of society. Some of this research – such as the Laffer Curve,

135
which states that cutting top marginal tax rates will increase rather than decrease tax
revenue – has, like austerity economics, dubious standing among academic economists.
Nevertheless, the Laffer Curve has left an indelible mark on how tax policy is deliberated
in the public sphere. Jonathan Chait (2007) traces this development to the emergence of
what he terms “class consciousness” among American business interests that drove
corporate lobbying interests in the 1970s to focus on common interests such as antitrust
and labor laws, regulatory reform and tax policy rather than narrow industry-specific
interests that conflicted with each other. Chait (2007) also argues that the takeover of the
Republican Party by movement conservatives opened the door to the legislative
implementation of the new economic agenda of corporate America. Furthermore, Jane
Mayer’s (2016) exposé of the vast influence of the Koch brothers on politics in America
at all levels complements this history by examining the strategic funding of judicial
elections, think tanks, media outlets and academic research at universities. Taken
together, Chait (2007) and Mayer’s (2016) historical analysis of how the legislative
dynamics and the terms of the public debate has shifted increasingly rightward is deeply
sourced and incredibly ambitious in scope. Moreover, treating the mainstream media and
political analysis as paralyzed by the norms and the political center of gravity of the
1970s clearly rings true of the arguments concerning austerity debates.
However, the debate concerning austerity economics is different from these long-
term trends that mainstream right-wing economic policy for several reasons. First,
austerity economics is not primarily defended as an economic theory diagnosing
macroeconomic problems and proscribing solutions, but rather as a necessary moral
cleansing following an economic crisis. While the Laffer Curve and austerity economics

136
are comparable in many respects, it is telling that unlike advocates for tax relief for the
top earners austerity advocates have sought to shift the debate away from empirical
questions of the theory of austerity itself and towards the morality of debt, spending and
consumption. Second, the business lobby – including but not limited to the U.S. Chamber
of Commerce – vehemently opposed the possibility of breaching the debt ceiling and the
budget sequester (Siddiqui & Blumenthal, 2013; Wasson, 2011; Yang & Eggen, 2011).
While the foundations for the rise of austerity economics within the Republican Party
were surely laid with the help of industry-funded economic theory amenable to business
interests, the case of austerity policy shows imperfect confluence between business
interests and the Republican Party and how some ideas gain a life of their own outside the
control of vested interests of institutional actors. Jon Lovett (2013), a former speech
writer for President Obama and Secretary Clinton, analogizes the Tea Party movement to
a tiger being successfully ridden by Republican elites, but then:
The tiger got sick of waiting for the gazelles it was promised, the gazelles
that were always one election away. The tiger was hungry and angry and
tired of being used and the longer it waited the more appetizing the elite
on its back became. So the tiger got a radio station and a news channel.
The tiger got organized and mobilized. And finally the tiger realized it
didn’t need someone kicking its sides telling it which way to run and who
to eat and when to eat and why it wasn’t time to eat and the time to eat
would come, don’t worry, you’ll eat soon enough. So the tiger ate its
master and now here we are (para. 13-14).

137
While Jon Lovett was referring to the Republican base and a certain radical wing of the
party, the principle is illustrative of the cultivation of the partisan approach to economics
in public debate – there is no switch to turn it off once it has outlived its usefulness.
Historical and journalistic research examining the rise of movement conservatism and its
backers shows how the groundwork was laid for certain ideas to thrive in the public
sphere, but it does not show why certain ideas have rhetorical currency or why they
gained favor among the constituencies they would harm the most. Moreover, while I have
limited my analysis of austerity to the U.S., austerity has also become prominent across
industrialized Western countries that have not seen a precipitous drop in union
membership and with publicly funded elections.
I have shown that the contours of public debate are structurally shaped by a
combination of political media dynamics and the U.S. political system that incentivize
partisanship and obstruction culminating rhetorically in the retooling of legitimation
crisis as political strategy. This conclusion is perhaps even more pessimistic than if it
were simply the case that a specific set of political candidates acted in bad faith while
pursuing execrable ends because it portends a future without public consensus around the
most relevant political facts. There is, in other words, a demand for controversy and
dissensus by political candidates aiming to demonstrate for the public that things are not
working well, and the demand is supplied by a political media establishment
understanding fairness as presenting the two talking points of the two competing political
parties. Both in the context of austerity specifically and political coverage generally the
media ecology of drama and conflict favors controversy creating a set of problems. First,
assigning guilt to alleged excesses – both private (liar loans) and public (deficits and

138
underfunded pension obligations) – perpetuates a narrative trust in institutions as well as
socially is misplaced. While the rise of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency was
undoubtedly caused by a number of factors, the cultivation of endemic corruption of the
process of government and public accountability certainly contributed. Second, scientific
consensus is thus set to be consistently undermined by the party out of power as a
rhetorical strategy to avoid lending bipartisan support to the party in power, and
interventions in this dynamic by media coming down in favor of one party will be seen as
straying from the objectivity of presenting both sides even if the substance was to be
explored in greater depth. There is thus every reason to think the future of politics during
– and subsequent to – the current administration will move towards a crisis based on ever
dwindling faith in public institutions and in turn the reduced capacity of public
institutions to resolve problems of common concern. Both political parties, to a varying
degree, have grasped the tactic of weaponizing politics to destroy the incumbent
president’s party credibility and regain political power themselves.
Future research into similar phenomena as the current study may also profit from
bringing methodologically and disciplinarily dissimilar approaches into conversation with
one another – dramatism adds a level of explanatory power to the phenomena of
manufactured scientific controversy while political polarization literature frames the
context for the debates once they are in the purview of the two main political parties.
Furthermore, future research might reconsider the possible contributions of the dismal
science to public debates about economic policy. Since the great financial crisis of 2008
the limitations of the field of economics have deservedly been publicly exposed, but the
absence of an expert community validating the empirical claims offered to the public by

139
politicians has been less examined. The implications of either flattening distinctions
between claims that are considered consensus positions by ideologically diverse
economists or sidelining empiricism altogether in favor of pontifications concerning the
morality of debt are significant and direct results of removing the field of economics from
the public sphere. The as yet unfulfilled promise of communities of academic bloggers
bypassing traditional media platforms to communicate and interact directly with the
public concerning issues of public interest is worthy of future research. The platforms of
academic bloggers continue to grow in popularity and they hold promise both to
rhetoricians of science examining new forms of consensus formations and to public
deliberation. The possibility of the public encountering ongoing research discussion
directly rather than in decontextualized soundbites remediated through journalistic
framings that have outlived their usefulness is promising. If there is a way out of the
prison of distortions and partisan framing endemic to the existing forms of public debate,
it is certain to include the platforms controlled by public intellectuals themselves. The
task for rhetorical scholars is to cultivate a scientific rhetoric by public intellectuals that
meets the dramatistic needs of the public without succumbing to empty populism.

140
References:
“A Breakdown in Risk Management: What Went Wrong at JP Morgan Chase?” (2012,
June 13
th
). Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. Accessed from
banking.senate.gov
“A less dismal debate” (2011, December 31
st
). The Economist. Retrieved from
economist.com August 10
th
2016.
Abramowitz, A. I. & Saunders, K. L. (2008). Is polarization a myth? Journal of Politics,
70(2): 542-555.
Abramowitz, A. & Webster, S. (2015, April). All politics is national: The rise of negative
partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. House and Senate elections in the 21st
century. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science
Association, Chicago, IL.
Alberti, L. & Hollihan, T. (2014). Communication & global power, market panics and the
limits of national power and authority: An argumentative analysis of the 2011 Italian
debt crisis. International Journal of Communication, 8.
Alesina, A. & Tabbellini, G. (1990). A positive theory of fiscal deficits and government
debt. Review of Economic Studies, 57: 403-414.
Allen, J. (2010, August 22
nd
). Armey to GOP leaders: Get some courage. The Hill.
Retrieved from thehill.com January 2017.
Allen, J. & Sherman, J. (2011, May 19
th
). GOP isn’t buying debt limit pitch. Politico.
Retrieved from politico.com.
Ambinder, M. (2010, March 11
th
). If Paul Ryan’s roadmap is the Republican way, why
isn’t anyone driving on it? The Atlantic. Retrieved January 2017 from

141
theatlantic.com
Anderson, M. (1990). Revolution: The Reagan legacy. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution
Press.
Arcenaux, K. (2015). Why you should not blame polarization on partisan news in J. Sides
& D. Hopkins (Eds.) Political Polarization in American Politics. New York, NY:
Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
Aristotle transl. by W. D. Ross. (2009). The Nicomachean ethics. Retrieved from
classics.mit.edu
Asen, R. (2004). A discourse theory of citizenship. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 90(2):
189-211.
Asen, R. (2009). Invoking the invisible hand, social security and the privatization debate.
East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press.
Asen, R. (2010). Reflections on the role of rhetoric in public policy. Rhetoric & Public
Affairs, 13(1): 121-143.
Aune, J. (2001). Selling the free market: the rhetoric of economic correctness. New York,
NY: Guilford Press.
Avent, R. (2011, April 5
th
). Best budget ever. The Economist. Retrieved from
economist.com
Avlon, J. (2011, July 15
th
). GOP’s debt kamikazes. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from
thedailybeast.com

142
Baker, D. (2011, April 6
th
). Representative Ryan proposes Medicare plan under which
seniors would pay most of their income for health care. Beat the Press. Retrieved
January 2017 from cepr.net
Banning, M.E. (2009). When poststructural theory and contemporary politics collide –
The vexed case of global warming. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies,
6(3): 285-304.
Barboza, D. (2008, November 9
th
). China unveils sweeping new plan for economy. The
New York Times.
Bartels, L. (2002). Beyond the running tally: Partisan bias in political perceptions.
Political Behavior, 24(2): 117-150.
Baum, M. A. & Groeling, T. (2008). New media and the polarization of American
discourse. Political Communication, 25: 345-365.
Bauman, Z. (2000). Liquid modernity. Cambridge: Polity.
Bedard, P. (2010, January 25
th
). Rick Santelli gets credit for Tea Party movement. US
News. Accessed from usnews.com
Bender, B. & MacQuarrie, B. (2012, August 13
th
). In Paul Ryan’s home state, he
supported US energy funds while decrying stimulus program. The Boston Globe.
Accessed June 10
th
from Boston.com
Bhagwati, J. N. (1982). Directly unproductive, profit-seeking (DUP) activities. Journal of
Political Economy. 90(5): 988-1002.
Bishop, B. (2008). The Big sort, why the clustering of like-minded Americans is tearing
us apart. New York, NY: Mariner Books.

143
Blake, J. (2012, January 23
rd
). Return of the ‘welfare queen.’ CNN. Retrieved from
CNN.com
Blyth, M. (2013). Austerity: The history of a dangerous idea. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
Brown, C. B. (2011, May 17
th
). Default deniers: The new skeptics. Politico. Retrieved
from politico.com
Brummett, B. (1984a). Burke’s representative anecdote as a method in media criticism.
Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 1(2): 161-176.
Brummet, B. (1984b). Rhetorical theory as heuristic and moral: A pedagogical
justification. Communication Education, 33(2): 97-107
Bryan, B. (2017, January 19
th
). OBAMA: This was the scariest night of my presidency.
Business Insider. Retrieved from businessinsider.com
Budget.senate.gov. (n.d.). S. Con. Res. 115
th
Congress. 1
st
Session. Retrieved from
http://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HEN17065.pdf
Burke, K. (1954). Permanence and change. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Burke, K (1959). Attitudes toward history. Berkeley, CA: The University of California
Press.
Burke, K. (1969). A rhetoric of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1973a). The philosophy of literary form. Berkeley, CA: The University of
California Press.
Burke, K. (1973b). “The Rhetorical situation” in Communication: Ethical and Moral
Issues [Ed. Lee Thayer], 263-275. London: Gordon & Breach.

144
Calmes, J. (2012, August 12
th
). For Ryan and Obama more than usual rivalry. The New
York Times. Retrieved January 2017 from nytimes.com
Calmes, J. & Cooper, M. (2009, November 20
th
). New consensus sees stimulus package
as worthy step. The New York Times. Accessed October 14
th
2016.
Campbell, A., Converse, P. E., Miller, W. E. & Stokes, D. E. (1960). The American voter.
New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Canfield, C. (2012, December 12
th
). Federal aid for home heat threatened by fiscal cliff.
The Huffington Post. Accessed February 12
th
2015 from huffingtonpost.com
Capehart, J. (2012, August 10
th
). Republicans had it in for Obama before day 1. The
Washington Post. Accessed June 10
th
2015 from washingtonpost.com
Ceccarelli, L. (2011). Manufactured scientific controversy: Science, rhetoric, and public
debate. Rhetoric & Public Affairs: 195-228.
Chait, J. (2007). The big con, the true story of how Washington got hoodwinked and
hijacked by crackpot economics. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
Chait, J. (2011). When conservatives loved Lord Keynes. The New Republic. Accessed
from newrepublic.com
Chait, J. (2013, December 5
th
). Three reasons why there might be a budget deal, and one
reason why there won’t be. New York Magazine. Retrieved January 2017 from
nymag.com
Chait, J. (2014). If Republicans win the Senate, what crisis will Mitch McConnell cook
up next? The New York Magazine. Accessed June 10
th
2015 from nymag.com.
Chait, J. (2015, April 17
th
). How ‘negative partisanship’ has transformed American

145
politics. The New York Magazine. Accessed April 20
th
from nymag.com.
Chait, J. (2016.). Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have a plan to make Trump popular.
The New York Magazine. Retrieved from nymag.com November 19
th
2016.
Chait, J. (2016, November 21
st
). Here’s why Trump and his party are desperate to sign a
huge infrastructure bill. The New York Magazine. Accessed November 21
st
from
nymag.com
Churchill, W. (1925, April 25
th
). Budget speech, British House of Commons. Retrieved
from fraser.stlouisfed.org
Cohen, G. L. (2003). Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on
political beliefs. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 85(5): 808-822.
Crawford, R. & Keynes, S. (February, 4
th
2015). “Options for further departmental
spending cuts” in Eds. Carl Emmerson, Paul Johnson, and Robert Joyce “IFS
Green Budget 2015”. Institute for Fiscal Studies, 10.1920/re.ifs.2014.0106
De Rugy, V. (2009). Spending under President George W. Bush. Working Paper
published by Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
della Porta, D. (2015). Social movements in times of austerity. Malden, MA: Polity.
DeLong, J. B. (2011a, July 24
th
). Debt ceiling watch: Ezra Klein makes a mistake
(nobody knows department). Grasping Reality With Both Hands. Retrieved
February 2017 from www.bradford-delong.com
DeLong, J. B. (2011b, July 24
th
). What to do about the debt ceiling... Grasping Reality
With Both Hands. Retrieved February 2017 from www.bradford-delong.com

146
DeLong, J. B. (2011c, July 30
th
). America’s decline watch: The months the locusts hath
eaten. Grasping Reality With Both Hands. Retrieved February 2017 from
www.bradford-delong.com
DeLong, J. B. (2011d, July 31
st
). The debt-ceiling deal. Grasping Reality With Both
Hands. Retrieved February 2017 from www.bradford-delong.com
DeLong, B. J. (2012, February 16
th
). Effects of the 2009 recovery act: Heartening news
about what economists think--Although Caroline Hoxby and Ed Lazear do go All-
in for Team Republican...Grasping Reality With Both Hands. Accessed February
10
th
from delong.typepad.com
“Debt limit” (2017). The U.S. Department of the Treasury. Retrieved February 2017 from
treasury.gov
Desmond-Harirs, J. (2015, February 10
th
). The irony of Obama’s optimism on race and
politics. Vox. Accessed from vox.com March 17
th
2015.
Easley, J. (2012, April 17
th
). Catholic bishops criticize Ryan budget cut to food stamps.
The Hill. Retrieved from thehill.com.
“Economic Stimulus” (2012, February 15
th
). IGM Forum. Accessed February 20
th
2015
from igmchicago.org
“Economic Stimulus Revisited.” (2014, July 29
th
). IGM Forum. Accessed February 20
th

2015 from igmchicago.org
Eichengreen, B. & Temin, P. (2010). Fetters of gold and paper. Oxford Review of
Economic Policy, 26(3): 370-384.

147
Epstein, J. (2011, May 26
th
). Dick Cheney: ‘I worship the ground Paul Ryan walks on’.
Politico. Retrieved January 2017 from politico.com
Everett, B. & Schor, E. (2016, December 5
th
). Democrats to give Trump Cabinet the
Garland treatment. Politico. Accessed December 5
th
from politico.com
Fabian, J. (2017, May 3
rd
). “Spicer: ‘literally impossible’ to predict ObamaCare repeal
bill’s effects.” The Hill. Retrieved from thehill.com.
“‘Face the Nation’ Transcript: August 7, 2011. (2011, August 7
th
). CBS News. Retrieved
from cbsnews.com
Fahrenthold, D. A. (2011 October 4
th
). For Rep. Ted Yoho, government shutdown is ‘the
tremor before the tsunami.’ The Washington Post. Retrieved from
washingtonpost.com
Fallows, J. (2011, April 8
th
). The brave and serious Mr. Ryan. The Atlantic. Retrieved
January 2017 from atlantic.com
Fair, R. C. (1978). The effects of economic events on votes for president. The Review of
Economics and Statistics, 60(2).
Farrel, H. (2013, March/April). Slaves of defunct economics. The Washington Monthly.
Fiorina, M. P. (1978). Economic retrospective voting in American national elections: A
micro-analysis. American Journal of Political Science, 22 (2): 426−443.
Fiorina, M. P. (1981). Retrospective voting in American national elections. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Fiorina, M. S., Abrams, S. J. & Pope, J. C. (2010). Culture war? The myth of a polarized
America. New York, NY: Longman.

148
Funke, M., Schularick, M., & Trebesch, C. (2015, November 21
st
). The political
aftermath of financial crises: Going to extremes. VOXEU. Retrieved from
voxeu.org
Gaines, B., Kuklinski, J. Quirk, B. & Verkuilen, J. (2007). Same facts: Different
interpretations: Partisan motivation and opinion on Iraq. Journal of Politics, 69(4):
957-974.
Garofolo, P. (2011, August 11
th
). FLASHBACK: 85 percent of House Republicans who
were serving in ’08 voted for Bush’s stimulus act. Think Progress. Accessed
June 17
th
from thinkprogress.org
Gauchat, G. (2011). The cultural authority of science: Public trust and acceptance of
organized science. Public Understanding of Science, 20(6): 751-770.
“Germany’s hyperinflation phobia” (2013, November 13
th
). The Economist. Retrieved
from economist.com
Giavazzi, F. & Pagano, M. (1990). “Can severe fiscal contractions be expansionary?
Tales of two small European countries” in NBER Macroeconomics Annual pp.
75-122. Cambridge, MA.
Gilens, M. (2012). Under the influence. Boston Review.
Goidel, R. K. & Langley, R. E. (1995). Media coverage of the economy and aggregate
economic evaluations: Uncovering evidence of indirect media effects. Political
Research Quarterly, 48(2): 313-328.
Goldfarb, Z. A. (2011, August 6
th
). S&P downgrade U.S. credit rating for first time. The
Washington Post. Retrieved from washingtonpost.com
Goodnight, G. T. (2009). The duties of advocacy: Argumentation under conditions of

149
disparity, asymmetry and difference in Frans H. van Eemeren & Bart Garssen
(Eds.) Pondering Problems of Argumentation - Twenty Essays on Theoretical
Issues. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Springer.
Goodnight, G. T. & Green, S. (2010). Rhetoric, risk and markets: the dot-com bubble.
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 96(2): 115-140.
Green, J. (2011, January 21
st).
Obama's rising approval validates McConnell's strategy. The
Atlantic. Accessed June 10
th
from atlantic.com
Grier, P. (2011, November 4th). National debt: Whom does the US owe? The Christian
Science Monitor.
Grim, R. (2009, March 16
th
). Specter: Republicans support stimulus, don’t want
‘fingerprints’ on it. The Huffington Post. Accessed March 2
nd
2016 from
huffingtonpost.com
Grim, R. (2012, August 18
th
). Paul Ryan defended stimulus -- When George W. Bush
wanted it in 2002 (VIDEO). Huffington Post. Accessed July 10
th
from
huffingtonpost.com
Grunwald, M. (2013). The new new deal, the hidden story of change in the Obama era.
New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
Grossman, M. & Hopkins, D. A. (2016). The not-so-great debate:
Party asymmetry and the news media in American politics. Paper delivered at the
Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.
Gulati, G. J., Just, M. J. & Crigler, A. N. (2004). News coverage of political campaigns.
In L. L. Kaid (Ed.), Handbook of political communication research (pp. 237-256).
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum

150
Habermas, J. (1976). Legitimation crisis. London: Heinemann.
Hacker, J. & Pierson, P. (2006). Off center, the Republican revolution and the erosion of
American democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hacker, J. & Pierson, P. (2015). No cost for extremism, why the GOP hasn’t (yet) paid
for its march to the right. The American Prospect. Accessed April 15
th
from
prospect.org
Hanan, J. S. & Chaput, C. (2013). Stating the exception, rhetoric & neoliberal governance
during the creation and passage of the emergency economic stabilization act of
2008. Argumentation & Advocacy, 50(1): 18-33.
Hayek, F. (1944/2007). The road to serfdom. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.
Healy, G. (2008). The cult of the presidency. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.
Heffer, S. (2015, January 15
th
). Simon Heffer: Why it’s time to debunk the Churchill
myth. The New Statesman. Retrieved from newstatesman.com
Hendin, R. (2011, July 19
th
). GOP debt plan: Balanced or bad policy? CBS News.
Retrieved from cbsnews.com
Hester, J. B. & Gibson, R. (2003). The economy and second-level agenda setting: A time
series analysis of economic news and public opinion about the economy.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 80(1): 73-90.
Hingtsman, D. & Goodnight, G. T. (2011). From the great depression to the great
recession: The 1932 Hayek-Keynes Debate: A study in economic uncertainty,
contingency, and criticism. POROI, 7(1): 1-22.

151
Holbrook, T. & Garand, G. C. (1996). Homo economus? Economic information and
economic voting. Political Research Quarterly, 49(2): 351-375.
Hollihan, T. (2009). Uncivil wars, political campaigns in a media age. Boston, MA:
Bedford St. Martins
Hoover, H. (1952). The memoirs of Herbert Hoover, the great depression 1929-1941.
New York, NY: The Macmillan Company.
HouseBudgetComittee. (2011, April 4
th
). The path to prosperity (episode 1): America's
two futures, visualized. [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://youtu.be/Xwv5EbxXSmE
Iyengar, S. & Kinder, D.R. (1987). News that matters. Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press.
Jacobsen, L. (2011, March 21
st
). Paul Ryan says CBO model of economy self-destructs
due to rising deficits in 2037. Politifact. Retrieved from politifact.com
Jamieson, K. H. & Capella, J. N. (2008). Echo chamber, Rush Limbaugh and the
conservative media establishment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Jilani, Z. (2011, January 5
th
). GOP Rep. Mulvaney, against raising the debt ceiling,
admits he doesn’t ‘know’ what will happen if it isn’t raised. Think Progress.
Retrieved from thinkprogress.org
Jones, A. (2013, October 7
th
). The default deniers are back. The Atlantic. Retrieved from
theatlantic.com
Karol, D. (2012, May 9
th
). Defining dissidence down. The Monkey Cage. Accessed April
15
th
from themonkeycage.org.

152
Keynes, J. M. (1964). The general theory of employment, interest and money. New York,
NY: Harcourt, Brace & World/Harbinger.
Khimm, S. (2012, September 14
th
). The sequester, explained. The Washington Post.
Retrieved February 2017 from washingtonpost.com
Kilgore, E. (2015). Election 2014: Why the Republicans swept the midterms.
Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Klein, E. (2010, February 1
st
). Rep. Paul Ryan’s daring new budget proposal. The
Washington Post. Retrieved January 2017 from voices.washingtonpost.com/
Klein, E. (2011a, April 12
th
). Wonkbook: Obama to back Simpson-Bowles. The
Washington Post. Retrieved January 2017 from washingtonpost.com
Klein, E. (2011b, August 18
th
). A ‘policy induced slowdown’. The Washington Post.
Retrieved January 2017 from washingtonpost.com
Klein, E. (2013, February 20
th
). The problem with Alan Simpson. The Washington Post.
Retrieved from washingtonpost.com
Klein, E. & Matthews, D. (2011, July 22
nd
). Everything you need to know about the debt
ceiling in one post. Wonkblog. Retrieved January 2017 from washingtonpost.com
Konzelmann, S. (2012). The economics of austerity. Centre for Business Research,
University of Cambridge Working Paper No. 434.
http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/WP434.pdf
Krueger, A. O. (1974). The political economy of the rent-seeking society. American
Economic Review, 64(3): 291-303.
Krugman, P. (2008, December 31
st
). Crying fire, fire in Noah’s flood. Conscience of a
Liberal. Retrieved January 2017 from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

153
Krugman, P. (2010, September 28
th
). Economics is not a morality play. Conscience of a
Liberal. Retrieved January 2017 from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011a, April 6
th
). Memory hole alert. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011b, April 6
th
). Ryan the ridiculous. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011c, April 7
th
). Even more Ryan ridiculousness. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved January 2017 from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011d, April 7
th
). Same as he ever was. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
January 2017 from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011e, April 10
th
). A word from those who. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011f, April 11
th
). Gullibility. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved from
Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011g April 14
th
). Lost Heritage. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved from
Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011h, April 29
th
). Flim Flam. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved from
Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011i, May 13
th
). Hitting the ceiling. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011j, July 26
th
). The disaster we know. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

154
Krugman, P. (2011k, July 31
st
). Linguistic note. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved from
Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011l, July 31
st
). My get-rich scheme. Conscience of a Liberal. Retrieved
from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011m, August 1
st
). Barack Obama, Comedian. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011n, August 1
st
). What I would have done. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011o, August 19
th
). Awesome wrongness. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2011p, November 18
th
). Delusions of mobility. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2012, January 1st). Nobody understands debt. The New York Times.
Krugman, P. (2013a, April 4th). The urge to purge. The New York Times.
Krugman, P. (2013b, April 22
nd
). Understanding the NBER. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2013c, May 13
th
). In Praise of Econowonkery. Conscience of a Liberal.
Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2013d, June 6th). How the Case for Austerity Has Crumbled. The New
York Review of Books.
Krugman, P. (2013e, December 17
th
). The Facebooking of economics. Conscience of a
Liberal. Retrieved from Krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

155
Krugman, P. (2013f). End this depression now! New York, NY: W. W. Norton &
Company.
Krugman, P. (2015a, March 14
th
). John and Maynard’s excellent adventures. The
Conscience of a Liberal. Accessed from nytimes.com March 20
th
2017.
Krugman, P. (2015b, June 25
th
). Breaking Greece. The Conscience of a Liberal. Accessed
from Krugman.blog.nytimes.com
Krugman, P. (2015c, July 7
th
). Debt deflation in Greece. The Conscience of a Liberal.
Accessed from Krugman.blog.nytimes.com
Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P., Jerit, J. Schwieder, D. & Rich, R. F. (2000). Misinformation
and the currency of democratic citizenship. Journal of Politics, 62(3): 790-816.
Layman, G. C., Carson, T. M., & Horowitz, J. M. (2006). Party polarization in American
politics: Characteristics, causes, and consequences. Annual Review of Political
Science, 9: 83-110.
Lee, F. E. (2009). Beyond ideology: Politics, principles and partisanship in the U.S.
Senate. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Lee, J. (2012, September 6
th
). President Obama on Labor Day: The fight for America's
workers continues. The White House. Accessed from whitehouse.gov.
Levendusky, M. (2009). The partisan sort: How liberals became Democrats and
conservatives became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Levendusky, M. (2013). How partisan media polarize America. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.

156
Lewis, M. (2010). The big short. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Lidskog, R. (1996). In science we trust? On the relation between scientific knowledge,
risk consciousness and public trust. Acta Sociologica, 39(1): 31-56.
“Lifting the Debt, Rejecting Decline, and Securing America’s Leadership.” (2011, June
2
nd
). Transcript available from budget.house.gov.
Lizza, R. (2012, August 6
th
). Fussbudget. The New Yorker. Retrieved January 2017 from
newyorker.com
Lizza, R. (2015). A House divided. The New Yorker. The New Yorker. Retrieved from
newyorker.com
“Long-Term Analysis of a Budget Proposal by Congressman Ryan” (2011, April 5
th
).
Congressional Budget Office. Retrieved January 2017 from cbo.gov
Lovett, J. (2013, October 16
th
). How the GOP slowly went insane. The Atlantic.
Retrieved from theatlantic.com
Luttrel, D., Atkinson, T., & Rosenblum, H. (2013). Assessing the costs and consequences
of the 2007–09 financial crisis and its aftermath. The Dallas Federal Reserve
Economic Letter, 8(7). Accessed from dallasfed.org.
Mankiw, N. G. (2008, November 28th). What would Keynes have done? The New York
Times.
Mankiw, G. (2011, August 13
th
). Coy or nuanced? Random Observations for Students of
Economics. Retrieved March 30
th
2017 from gregmankiw.blogspot.com
Mandleville, B. (1989/1723). The Fable of the bees: Or private vices, Publick benefits.
London, England: Penguin Classics.

157
Mann, T. E. & Ornstein, N. J. (2012). It’s even worse than it looks: How the American
constitutional system collided with the politics of extremism. New York, NY: Basic
Books.
Marcus, G. E., Neumann, W. R. & MacKuen, M. (2000). Affective intelligence and
political judgment. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Mayer, J. (2016). Dark money, The hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of
the radical right. New York, NY: Doubleday.
McCarty, N., Pool, K. & Rosenthal, H. (2006). Polarized America. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
McCarty, N., Pool, K. & Rosenthal, H. (2009). Does gerrymandering cause polarization?
American Journal of Political Science, 53(3): 666-680.
McCarty, N., Pool, K., Rosenthal, H., & Hare, C. (2012, May 15
th
). Polarization is real
(and asymmetric). The Monkey Cage. Accessed April 15
th
from
themonkeycage.org
McCarty, N. (2015). What we know and do not know about our polarized politics in J.
Sides & D. Hopkins (Eds.) Political Polarization in American Politics. New York,
NY: Bloomsbury Academic Publishing.
McCloskey, D. N. (1993). Second thoughts: Myths and morals in U.S. economic history.
New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
McCloskey, D. (1998). The rhetoric of economics. Madison, WI: The University of
Wisconsin Press.

158
McLean, B. & Nocera, J. (2010). All the devils are here: The hidden story of the financial
crisis. New York, NY: Penguin.
“Meet the Press transcript for April 10, 2011.” (2011, April 10
th
). NBC News. Retrieved
from nbcnews.com
“Meet the Press transcript for August 7, 2011.” (2011, August 7
th
). NBC News. Retrieved
from nbcnews.com
“Meet the Press transcript for July 17, 2011.” (2011, April 10
th
). NBC News. Retrieved
from nbcnews.com
Mendoza, K. (2015). Austerity: the demolition of the welfare state and the rise of the
zombie economy. Oxford, UK: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.
Mihm, S. (2008, December 7
th
). So, you want to save the economy? Boston.com.
Retrieved from Boston.com August 10
th
2016.
Mitchell, G., & Lyne, J. (2015). Argument operators and hinge terms in climate science
in B. Garssen, D. Godden, F.S. Henkemans & G. Mitchell (Eds.) Proceedings of
the Eighth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rozenberg Publishers.
Muller, J. Z. (2002). The Mind and the market: Capitalism in modern European thought.
New York, NY: Knopf.
“National Unemployment Rate at 4.8% through January 2017” (2017, February 3
rd
).
National Conference for State Legislatures. Retrieved January 2017 from ncsl.org
Nietzsche, F. (1989). On the genealogy of morals and ecce homo (Translated by Walter
Kaufmann and K. J. Hollingdale). New York, NY: Random House.

159
Nocera, J. (2012, October 5
th
). Jobs report: Cooked or correct. The New York Times.
Retrieved from nytimes.com
Paliewicz, N. S. (2012). Global warming and the interaction between the public and
technical spheres of argument: When standards for expertise really matter.
Argumentation & Advocacy, 48(4): 231-242.
Palin, S. (2010, December 10
th
). Why I support the Ryan roadmap. The Wall Street
Journal. Retrieved January 2017 from wsj.com
Persson, T. & Svensson, L. O. (1989). Why a stubborn conservative would run a deficit:
Policy with time-inconsistent preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics,
104(2): 325-345.
Plumpe, W. (2012, October 31
st
). The hour of the expert. Eurozine.
Pope, T & Roantree, B. (2014, November). “A survey of the UK tax system” IFS
Briefing Note BN09. Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Porter, A. & Aldrick, P. (2010, October 26
th
). “Interest rates set to rise as economy
recovers.” The Telegraph. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk
Praet, P. (2013, November 13
th
). Steering the economy in a challenging environment. The
European Central Bank. Retrieved from ecb.europa.eu
Prasad, E. (2012, February 25
th
). The U.S.-China economic relationship: Shifts and twists
in the balance of power. The Brookings Institution. Retrieved from brookings.edu
Prior, M., Sood, G., & Khanna, K. (2015). You cannot be serious: The impact of
accuracy incentives on partisan bias in reports of economic perceptions. The

160
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 10(4): 489-518.
Quiggin, J. (2012). Zombie economics, How dead ideas still walk among us. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rogers, S. (2016). National forces in state legislative elections. The Annals of the
American Academy, 667(1): 207-225.
Rajan, R. (2005). Has financial development made the world riskier? The National
Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper. Accessed from nber.org March 14
th

2015.
Reinhart, C. & Rogoff, K. (2010). Growth in a time of debt. American Economic Review,
100: 573-578.
Ryan, P. (2011a, July 11
th
). Social teaching and the federal budget: A Catholic
politician’s view. Retrieved from paulryan.house.gov
Ryan, P. (2011b, August 2
nd
). A response to Gene Sperling. Retrieved from
paulryan.house.gov
Sapienza, P. & Zingales, L. (2013). Economic experts vs. average Americans. American
Economic Review, 103(3): 636-42.
Schlesinger, R. (2013, September 13
th
). It’s official: GOP voters are economic anarchists.
US News. Accessed July 12
th
from: usnews.com
Schlichter, S. H. (1932, April 19
th
). Should the budget be balanced? The New Republic.

161
Schneider, M. (2011, July 10
th
). Sen. McConnell: Making Obama a one-term president is
my single most important political goal. Mediaite. Accessed March 10
th 2015
from
mediaite.com
Schui, F. (2014) Austerity, The great failure. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Schumpeter, J. (1944/2008). Capitalism, socialism, and democracy. New York, NY:
Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
SHUTDOWN AVERTED; PAINFUL CUTS. (2011, April 10
th
). ABC News Transcript.
Retrieved from www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic
Sibun, J. & Armitstead, L. (2012, March 14
th
). “UK could lose coveted AAA rating,
warns Fitch.” The Telegraph. Retrieved from www.telegraph.co.uk
Siddiqui, S. & Blumenthal, P. (2013, August 18
th
). Lawmakers backed by Chamber of
Commerce spending stall business lobby’s legislative priorities. The Huffington
Post. Retrieved from huffingtonpost.com
Smith, A. (2003). An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Smith, N. (2011a, July 29
th
). Nationalism, the U.S. debt, and the “party of business.”
Noahpinion. Retrieved February 2017 from noahpinion.blogspot.com
Smith, N. (2011b, August 8
th
). Republicans own this downgrade. Noahpinion. Retrieved
February 2017 from noahpinion.blogspot.com
Smith, N. (2013). KrugTron the invincible. Noahpinion. Retrieved February 2017 from
noahpinion.blogspot.com
Snell, K. & Weigel, D. (2017, January 5
th
). Conservatives ready to support $1 trillion
hole in the budget. The Washington Post. Retrieved from washingtonpost.com

162
January 5
th
2017.
Snyder, T. (2016, November 21
st
). 20 lessons from the 20
th
century on how to survive in
Trump’s America. In These Times. Retrieved from inthesetimes.com
Stiglitz, J. (2010). Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world economy.
New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Stuckler, D. & Basu, S. (2013, May 12
th
). Austerity kills. The New York Times.
Suttles, G. D. (2010). Front page economics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago
Press.
Taylor, F. (2013). The downfall of money: Germany’s hyperinflation and the destruction
of the middle class. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press.
“The economic effects of the Ryan plan: Assuming the answer?” (2011, April 14
th
). The
Blog of Macroeconomic Advisers LLC. Retrieved January 2017 from
macroadvisers.blogspot.com
“'This Week' Transcript: David Plouffe and Lindsey Graham.” (2011, July 31
st
). ABC
News. Retrieved from abcnews.go.com
“‘This Week’ Transcript: Rep. Paul Ryan. (2011, May 1
st
). ABC News. Retrieved from
abcnews.go.com
“‘This Week’ Transcript: S&P’s John Chambers, Governor Martin O’Malley and Senator
Jeff Sessions.” (2011, August 7
th
). ABC News. Retrieved from abcnews.go.com
“‘This Week’ Transcript: Timothy Geitner.” (2011, April 17
th
). ABC News. Retrieved
from abcnews.go.com

163
Thoma, M. (2011a, April 8
th
). “Implied supply side elasticities from the Heritage cda
simulations.” Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from
economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2011b, May 15
th
). The outcome of the debt ceiling battle could hurt the
economy. Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from
economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2011c, May 19
th
). “Evidence of a dark, self-destructive impulse.”
Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2011d, July 5
th
). The debt ceiling fight is not about the national debt.
Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2011e, July 14
th
). Seasonal adjustment and new unemployment insurance
claims. Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from
economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2011f, August 14
th
). White House debates giving up on economy.
Economist’s View. Retrieved January 2017 from economistsview.typepad.com
Thoma, M. (2013, March 13
th
). Why politicians ignore economists on austerity.
Economists View. Accessed from economistsview.blogspot.com
Tomorrow, T. (2012, May 14
th
). The Austerions. This Modern World. Retrieved February
2017 from thismodernworld.com
Topaz, J. (2014, December 17
th
). ‘Worst Congress ever’ by the numbers. Politico.
Retrieved January 2017 from politico.com

164
Trench, B. (2008). Internet: Turning science communication inside-out. In M. Bucchi &
B. Trench (Eds.), Handbook of public communication of science and technology
(pp. 185–198). New York: Routledge.
Tullock, G. (1967). The welfare costs of tariffs, monopolies, and theft. Western Economic
Journal, 5(3): 224-232.
Wallach, P. A. (2013, January). Mr. Boehner, tear down this debt ceiling. The Brookings
Institution. Retrieved January 2017 from brookings.edu
Wapshott, N. (2011). Keynes Hayek: The clash that defined modern economics. New
York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company Inc.
Wasson, E. (2011, May 2
nd
). Business lobby calls for debt ceiling increase. The Hill.
Retrieved from thehill.com
Watt, N. (2013). “David Cameron makes leaner state a permanent goal.” The Guardian.
Retrieved from guardian.co.uk
Weber, M. (1905/2013). The protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New
York, NY: Merchant Books.
Weisberg. J. (2011, April 20
th
). The Ryan reaction. Slate. Retrieved January 2017 from
slate.com
Weisenthal, J. (2011, November 18
th
). DYLAN GRICE: Germany is making the same
mistake that Allowed Nazis to Come to Power. Business Insider. Retrieved from
businessinsider.com

165
Weismann, J. (2012, September 14
th
). White House details potential effects if automatic
budget cuts go through. The New York Times. Accessed from nytimes.com
February 12
th
2015.
Wicklund, P. (2002, January 8
th
). Ryan: Stimulus package needed for business growth.
The Journal Times. Accessed July 10
th
from journaltimes.com
Wines, M. (1992, September 22
nd
). The 1992 campaign: The Republicans; Bush says
economy is not as bad as people think. The New York Times.
Wolf, M. (2011a, April 12
th
). The radical right and the US state. Financial Times.
Retrieved January 2017 from ft.com
Wolf, M. (2011b, July 12
th
). From Italy to the US, utopia to reality. Financial Times.
Retrieved January 2017 from ft.com
Wolfers, J. (2012, July 25
th
). The secret consensus among economists. Freakonomics.
Retrieved from freakonomics.com
“World Economic Outlook.” (2012). The International Monetary Fund. Retrieved from
imf.org
Wren-Lewis, S. (2013, March 22
nd
). The power of austerity over politicians. Mainly
Macro. Accessed from mainlymacro.blogspot.com
Yang, J. L. & Eggen, D. (2011, July 11
th
). Congress hears outcry from business lobby on
debt ceiling and deficits. The Washington Post. Retrieved from
washingtonpost.com

166
Yglesias, M. (2013, May 16
th
). Pay for the sins of the past by working harder, not
by throwing millions into unemployment. Slate. Accessed August 15th
from slate.com
Ziliak, S. (2003). Freedom to exchange and the rhetoric of economic correctness in W. J.
Samuels & J. E. Biddle (Eds.) Research in the History of Economic Thought and
Methodology. New York, NY: Elsevier Press.
Zumbrun, J. (2016, November 13
th
). GDP, inflation and interest rates forecast to rise
under Trump presidency. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from wsj.com December
14
th
2016.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Rhetorical strategies in contemporary responses to science and modernity: legitimizing religion in human origins and climate change controversies

PDF

Deliberating the science of madness: DSM-5 and the polytechtonic rhetorical economy of psychiatric nosological controversy

PDF

The Vulcan rhetoric of crisis: presidential advisors and the War in Iraq

PDF

For whom is neo-soul?: Black women and rhetorical invention in the public sphere

PDF

George H. W. Bush and the new world order: on stasis, the just war & rhetorical legacy—“a world in disarray”?

PDF

An anthropocene rhetoric of ecological networking: the biomic politics of nonhuman nature, culture and politics at the European Green Belt

PDF

Nosopolitics of postwar trauma: a study in rhetorical networks (1967–2015)

PDF

Disturbing the peace: television, disruption, and the roles of Black women

PDF

A question of identity: the rhetoric and argument of conspiracy theories

PDF

Impurely raced // purely erased: toward a rhetorical theory of (bi)racial passing

PDF

Focusing the family: the rhetorical construction of "family values" in contemporary cultural politics

PDF

Narratives in the autism paradigm: rhetoric, (re)presentation, and (inter)action

PDF

Miracles of birth and action: natality and the rhetoric of birth advocacy

PDF

Sacred places in transition: congregation and deliberation in 3 Los Angeles churches

PDF

Navigating gendered relationships: change and inertia in U.S. activism against sexual assault

PDF

From worldbuilding to worldblending: transmedia rhetoric, identification, and immersion in storyworlds

PDF

The gene is out of the bottle: the communication of genetic complexity in direct-to-consumer genetics

PDF

Spaces of autonomy and polarization: toward a theory of the globalization of economic and political cultures characteristic of American journalism

PDF

Hepatitis C in the post-interferon era: selected essays in health economics

PDF

Realitics: Speculative economies and the transformation of American politics

Asset Metadata

Creator Rhode, Flemming Schneider (author)

Core Title The politics of pseudo-scientific economic argumentation: a rhetorical analysis of the rise of austerity economics

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 09/21/2017

Defense Date 08/24/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag controversy,dramatism,OAI-PMH Harvest,rhetoric of economics,rhetoric of science

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hollihan, Tom (committee chair), Goodnight, Tom (committee member), Lake, Randall (committee member)

Creator Email flemminginla@gmail.com,rhode@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-430762

Unique identifier UC11265424

Identifier etd-RhodeFlemm-5737.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-430762 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-RhodeFlemm-5737.pdf

Dmrecord 430762

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Rhode, Flemming Schneider

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA