Let’s say the U.S. economy is a man drowning in a swimming pool. Water is getting into his lungs, crowding out the oxygen, and he can’t breathe. But just as he’s going down, a couple of people passing by see him, grab him and pull him out of the pool.

He’s lying on the ground, sputtering. No more water is getting into his lungs, but his face has a blue tinge to it. One of the passersby starts applying CPR and forces air into his lungs. Suddenly, the second passerby pushes the first one off of the drowning man.

The second passerby must be a congressional Republican.

OK, this is a goofy simile, but it contains a grain of truth. Our economy may have “recovered” in the technical sense in that GDP (gross domestic product) is believed to have stopped contracting in the fourth quarter of 2009, like the drowning man whose lungs stopped taking on water when he was pulled from the swimming pool.

But about 15% of Americans who want a full-time job still either don’t have a job at all or have been forced to take part-time work. And that doesn’t count the legions who are working at a full-time job that only pays a fraction of what they were making before the Great Recession.

Let’s say federal economic stimulus spending is oxygen. You don’t deny oxygen to a drowning man who just got pulled from a pool. To recover, he needs more oxygen.

But when it comes to the economy, Republicans in Washington have decided to repeat another of their Orwellian mantras, insisting repeatedly that the country can’t afford any more stimulus spending (not even the lifeline of extended unemployment benefits) because it will saddle all our children with a mountain of debt.

This ignores the fact that if one or both of our childrens’ parents remain out of work, the chances of the kids growing up to be productive, tax-paying members of society are slim.

But that’s not all it ignores. The fact is, U.S. debt as a percentage of GDP (which is what counts) is considerably lower now than it was in the mid ’90s. And raising the ratio of national debt to GDP by another 5% to 8% over the next two to four years (until employment is restored) will not lay debt on your children, because the deficit can be reduced again via the rising tide (increased tax base) provided by a healthy economy. Middle class prosperity coupled with government austerity measures during the Clinton years reduced the debt-to-GDP ratio significantly, which had been steadily rising under the watch of Reagan and Bush Sr.

The time to cut the oxygen is after the patient stands up and starts breathing on his own. The time to cut stimulus spending is after Americans are back at work. To cut stimulus spending now is to encourage higher unemployment, or creation of a permanent class of unemployed.

The sad thing is, Republican congressional leaders are fully aware of this, but continue their knowingly false mantra that deficits will make the sky fall. Not because they think cutting off stimulus spending is the right thing to do for America, but because they think it will make the Obama administration look more ineffective so that they can perhaps win some more seats at Congress in the coming election.

In other words, the Republican Party is willing to put America at risk because they calculate that doing so might boost their approval rating in the eyes of a public that doesn’t understand basic economics.

And, unsurprisingly, the national GOP has plenty of help from their media surrogates. Like the Wall Street Journal, which runs a story saying most economists don’t think further U.S. stimulus spending is necessary. But that’s because they only chose to talk to economists who mostly parrot their point of view, while there are plenty of recognized economists who believe stimulus spending to date has been inadequate and more is needed to pull the unemployed out of the swimming pool.

If the Republicans really are concerned with budget deficits, then they should question the need to continue pouring billions of dollars into Defense Department activities, a.k.a. two worthless wars in which our children will continue dying for no good reason, until we agree to no longer pay 20% of our budget for fantasy nation-building exercises.

And if Republicans really are interested in making sure their children aren’t saddled with debt, they need to figure out why people are being charged $900 for a blood test and getting away with it. Because under current law, payroll taxes required to pay for Medicare parts A and B will increase from the current 2.9% of wages to a whopping 20.4% of your kids’ (or grandkids’) wages by 2054.

The problem is not and will not be with stimulus spending. The problem is with unfunded war, uncontrolled insurance and medical procedure costs, and politicians who put their individual needs ahead of America’s.

Cross-posted from bobdunn.com