Our Crazy Electorate

Steve Benen observes that according to the latest NBC/WSJ poll voters are weirdly averse to budget deficits:

Which of the following two statements comes closer to your point of view?

Statement A: The President and the Congress should worry more about boosting the economy even though it may mean larger budget deficits now and in the future.

Statement B: The President and the Congress should worry more about keeping the budget deficit down, even though it may mean it will take longer for the economy to recover.

Thinking about it rationally, the reason to worry about large deficits is that they can impede economic growth. That makes it generally worthwhile to try to run balanced budgets over the course of the business cycle. But under circumstances when running a larger deficit doesn’t hurt growth, there’s no real reason to try to avoid deficits. It’s not like the Gods of budgetary balance have some other way to punish countries for large deficits other than reduced growth.

I assume the real issue here is that many people are explicitly rejecting the premise of the question and just think that deficit spending aimed at boosting the economy won’t actually boost the economy. They’re wrong about that, but lots of folks are out they saying fiscal policy can’t boost growth so it shouldn’t be shocking that some people believe them.