Republicans, Fiscal Responsibility, and $23.7 Trillion

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), made headlines when he estimated that the Obama administration may have committed as much as $23.7 trillion to patch up the U.S. economy. This figure, and fiscal responsibility in general, should be a galvanizing force for the Republican Party in upcoming political battles.

Twenty-three-point-seven-trillion-dollars is a hard number to get your head around. For the sake of simplicity, we'll round up to $24 trillion from here on. After all, if we learned anything from the Obama administration these past six months, it's "What's a couple billion dollars among friends?"

To help put $24 trillion in perspective, here are some visual aids: One trillion one-dollar bills measure a quarter of the distance to the moon, and would weigh about 1.1 million tons. That means 24 trillion one-dollar bills, laid end to end, would make three round trips to the moon, and weigh 26.4 million tons.

If you feel exhausted from the numbers, that's exactly how you should feel in 2010 and 2012 if the Republicans play their cards right. The party that supports fiscal responsibility has a solid claim on why it should be in office.

While these numbers are huge, Americans care a great deal about results, and if TARP, auto bailouts, and stimulus money manage to bring the economy back by 2010, it may not matter how much has been spent. But if the economy is still in recovery mode, Republicans may regain filibuster power in the Senate and, ideally for them, a majority in the House.

In 2012, if the economy is still in the tank, Republicans should have no trouble driving home the fiscal responsibility message. Still, even skeptics such as myself feel that the business cycle will at some point pull us out of this slump (which is very likely to happen before 2012). This means that with a not-as-bad economy, a Republican candidate will have to drive home the deficit and our debt as their main issue against Barack Obama.

That candidate to champion fiscal responsibility could be Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Many don't remember the "road map" that Congressman Ryan put out in 2008, but it outlined GOP solutions to Medicare, Social Security, and taxes, among others. The main appeal of Ryan should be that he stuck to free market principles when many Republicans did not. He opposed the auto bailouts (while Bush was in office) and is economically informed enough to occasionally co-host CNBC's "Squawk Box."

Of course many conservatives turn to Mitt Romney as the free market guru. Romney, a savvy businessman and former Massachusetts governor, might have one main problem in a Republican Party that is looking for new faces: He's not a new face.

Ryan and Romney seem to be the two Republican fiscal conservatives who could run on that platform, but as we know from the party's decision to bring Sarah Palin into the fold -- surprises happen. With the likes of Bobby Jindal and Jon Huntsman testing the waters for a presidential run, things could radically change. The only thing that's for sure: while these decisions are being made, many, many dollars will be needed to reboot our economic system.

The idea of trillions of dollars being spent doesn't bring just Republicans out of the woodwork. With continued troubles, the same under-30 crowd that voted for -- and propped up the campaign of -- Obama might not be so inclined in 2012. Supporters may find that after student loans and credit card debt is coupled with inflation and a stagnant, non-job-producing economy, Obama loses much of his allure.

Obama still has the "blame Bush" card, but that is likely to be overplayed by 2012. To keep the under-30 group, Obama is going to have to show some results in the economy or find some way of satisfying young voters in a different way -- like a new way for the government to forgive large chunks of student loans (so that we don't end up with more cases like this one).

If four years of Obama yields a huge deficit, increasing inflation, a stagnant or still recessionary economy, and not many new jobs, Obama might not be able to look to the under-30 voters as a sure thing. They might be looking somewhere else this time around for hope and change.