Neo-Hoover Deficit Hawks?

Robert Reich who was Secretary of Labor under President Clinton used the term "Neo-Hoover deficit hawks" in a recent column. It sounds good since Hoover's reputation never recovered from the stock market crash and the Great Depression but how accurately does it describe today's fiscal conservatives?

Fiscally, Hoover was all over the place. He started his administration believing in tax cuts and balanced budgets but, after the start of the Depression he pushed through the Revenue Act of 1932 which has been described as the largest peacetime tax increase in history. It raised tax rates across the board, with the rate on top incomes rising from 25 percent to 63 percent. The estate tax was doubled and corporate taxes were raised by almost 15 percent. He also raised tariffs and instituted a tax on all bank checks. Which party does that sound like? If there is any doubt, Reich's column makes it clear.

And don't believe the supply-siders who say we have to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Because the wealthy save rather than spend most of their incomes, extending their tax cut won't do squat.

[...] Put more money in consumer's wallets by eliminating payroll taxes on the first $20K of income (and make it up by applying payroll taxes to incomes over $250K.)

Reich has his own interpretation of the term "save". The rich do not stick their money under a mattress or even put it in a savings account. They invest it. This is what leads to long-term growth, not government jobs.

Also, according to a news report, some school districts decided to save the federal grant money that they were given to re-hire teachers. It turns out that the type of stimulus money that Reich prefers doesn't do squat, either.

Reich also says

We need a giant jobs program to hire people and put money in their pockets that they'll spend and thereby create more jobs. Put ideology aside and recognize this fact. If it makes you more comfortable call it the National Defense Jobs Act. Call it the WPA. Call it Chopped Liver. Whatever, we have to get the great army of the unemployed and underemployed working again.

This is a call to be like FDR, not Hoover but the two do not have the bright distinction that Reich thinks is there. Wikipedia's entry on Hoover contains this nugget:

Even so, New Dealer Rexford Tugwell later remarked that although no one would say so at the time, "practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."

Reich is misquoting history in order to advance his own agenda of tax and spend. It failed when Hoover tried it; it failed when FDR expanded it; and it continues to fail in the age of Obama.