Perhaps “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski’s take on Joe Scarborough’s conservatism as being elegant, articulate and non-aggressive isn’t as spot on as she thought, but it is entertaining to see the former Florida Republican congressman get fired up on his MSNBC program.
The question: Do politicians really care about the deficit, or is it just a talking point used to score political points? According to Scarborough, they don’t – particularly Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. On his December 13 show, Scarborough launched into a rant about federal politicos and their posturing on deficit spending and the national debt.
“Any president that gave a damn about the deficit would not have added a trillion dollars to the national debt,” Scarborough said. “He doesn’t give a damn about it. He never has. George W. Bush never gave a damn about it. He never did. The Republicans don’t care about it. The Democrats don’t care about it – because if they did, we wouldn’t be going from $5 trillion in 2000 of the national debt to $16 trillion over the next couple of years.”
“Morning Joe” panelist John Heilemann suggested Scarborough stay tuned for Obama’s State of the Union address in a month, to which Scarborough said it would just be talk like every other attempt at voicing fiscal responsibility.
“Oh, they’ll talk – they’ll talk,” he continued. “And Bill Clinton said, ‘The era of big government is over.’ Republicans talk about it. They don’t mean anything. Nancy Pelosi in 2006 talked about it. She didn’t mean anything. They – ‘Oh, we’re going to pass pay-go.’ Then they break it. ‘We’re going to be fiscally disciplined, then they break it.”
He did name two politicians in the U.S. Senate that passed the fiscal conservatism test – Kentucky Republican Sen.-elect Rand Paul and South Carolina Republican Sen. Jim DeMint.
“There are a couple of Tea Partiers that actually care about this issue,” Scarborough said. “And nobody else in Washington does. Rand Paul does and DeMint said he’s going to vote against this because of deficits. Nobody in Washington cares about this.”
Watch: