When he’s not reminiscing about having successfully deregulated credit default swaps, Pennsylvania’s Republican senate nominee Pat Toomey likes to scaremonger about government spending. In fact, he told the Harrisburg Patriot-News’ editorial board that one of his “top three priorities” is cutting government spending.

“I hear a lot of people who are fearful about the future of our country,” Toomey said. “They are very worried about the size of the deficit and worried their kids are ultimately not going to be able to attain the standard of living they’ve enjoyed because of the debt we are imposing on them.”

But if Toomey wants to decrease the deficit, he sure has a funny way of showing it. The Patriot News reported that Toomey’s legislative goals are “repeal the Obama administration’s health care reform law, impose no huge tax increases, oppose cap-and-trade energy legislation and make permanent the Bush-era tax cuts and extend them to top American earners.” None of these steps do anything to reduce the deficit, and two of them make it considerably worse:

– Repeal the Affordable Care Act: According to the Congressional Budget Office, repealing health care reform would add $143 billion to the deficit.

– Permanently extend the Bush tax cuts: The entire tax cut package costs more than $3 trillion. Extending just the cuts for the wealthiest two percent of households — which President Obama wants to see expire — costs $830 billion.

– Oppose cap-and-trade: According to the CBO, Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) cap-and-trade plan would reduce the deficit by $19 billion over the next ten years and not increase the deficit at all for the next forty years.

If Toomey is against “huge tax increases,” is he endorsing little ones? In any case, no serious analyst believes that the budget can be balanced on the spending side alone (as doing so would require draconian cuts to highly popular and vital programs). As former Reagan economic official Bruce Bartlett wrote, “the idea that we can or even should embark on serious deficit reduction with no tax increase whatsoever is grossly immature and unworthy of consideration.”

So Toomey, after paying the necessary lip service to cutting spending, embraced a legislative agenda that would cause the deficit to explode, and explicitly ruled out raising any revenue to offset his humongous expenditures. He’s either clueless about the effect of his proposals or he’s simply a deficit peacock who is more interested in ginning up anxieties about the deficit than in actually taking the necessary steps to bring it down.

Last week, I noted that Republicans were deriding President Obama’s plan for a $50 billion infrastructure investment as unaffordable, at the same time that they were promoting a roughly $800 billion tax cut for the richest two percent of Americans. For months, though, Republicans have scoffed at any additional federal spending aimed at boosting the economy, including extensions of unemployment benefits.

Today, MSNBC’s Savannah Guthrie tried to get to the bottom of this contradiction with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). When it comes to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, Guthrie asked “is this deficit spending that Republicans support?” McConnell refused to answer, so Guthrie followed up: “But you don’t dispute that we’re all going into debt for these tax cuts, you don’t dispute that that would require more debt?” McConnell again didn’t deny it. Watch it:

McConnell finally tried to justify his position by asserting that “tax revenues have grown over the years at the current tax rate.” Of course, he failed to mention that, as a percentage of GDP, revenues have never come back to the 2000 level since Bush began slashing taxes indiscriminately. McConnell also refused to respond to Guthrie’s question regarding whether or not the tax cuts will pay for themselves, but he has in the not-too-distant past erroneously claimed that the Bush tax cuts increased revenue.

McConnell is part of the cadre of Republicans doing damage control following House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) assertion on Sunday that, if it was the only choice, he would vote to adopt President Obama’s plan to extend middle class tax cuts while allowing those for the rich to expire. So far, McConnell, House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) have all come out and disavowed Boehner’s statement (which Boehner himself has been trying to walk back since it occurred).

But this is the crux of the issue. Republicans oppose the most effective forms of government spending when it comes to boosting the economy, yet want to turn around and borrow $830 billion to cut taxes for the richest two percent of the country, after they set the 2011 expiration when they passed the Bush tax cuts in the first place.

Not only that, but as evidenced by McConnell’s Tax Hike Prevention Act of 2010, the GOP also wants to adopt a cut in the estate tax that gives $91 billion to the richest 0.25 percent of households. So Guthrie was spot-on: deficit spending in order to benefit the wealthy is something Republicans unequivocally support.

The Senate is planning to work this week on a bill that provides tax credits to small businesses and creates a $30 billion lending fund for those same businesses to access loans. The $30 billion would go to community banks, and the interest rate that the bank pays to the government for the loan would decrease if the bank uses the money to finance small businesses.

Considering that Republicans claim to be staunch defenders of small businesses (and use small businesses as cover to justify their desire to cut taxes for the richest two percent of Americans), this should be a fairly non-controversial piece of legislation. Alas, nothing comes easy in this Congress. In fact, today on C-Span, Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) said that small businesses “need another loan like they need a kick in the pants.” Watch it:

I guess a kick in the pants is pretty sorely needed then? Consider this chart from the latest National Federation of Independent Business small business survey:

According to a new report from the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, “the number of loans made to small businesses, which peaked at 27.2 million in the second quarter of 2008, has fallen by more than 4.8 million since then, a drop of 17.8 percent. The total value of those loans fell by $60 billion.” “The restrictive lending environment continues to impair the ability of small businesses to obtain credit needed for workforce expansion,” the report said.

Johanns is not the first to have trouble wrapping his head around the notion that banks may be hesitant to lend to small businesses in the aftermath of a financial crisis. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele last week said “you’re going to put money into financial institutions on the assumption that small businesses are going to go and take out credit loans, or credit lines — they don’t need that.” One week earlier, Steele was in an entirely different place though, calling for a focus on “incentives for people to get back into the credit markets.”

Johanns does have a point about small businesses ultimately expanding when they have enough customers to support such a move. But there is a credit crunch occurring in the small business world, which Republicans seem willing to ignore, in order to prevent the Obama administration’s proposal from going forward. Remember, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who intends to support the bill, has already acknowledged that Republican opposition is all about “messaging.” “We don’t have time for messaging,” Voinovich said. “We don’t have time anymore. This country is really hurting.”