Conservatives fickle love of fiscal conservatism

Over at National Review, where intellectual honesty drifts across the site like so much tumbleweed, Stephen Spruiell is certain that the loss of jobs resulting from student loan reform -- in which the wasteful middleman is eliminated -- is a sign of the program's failure:

Jobs Created or Saved Destroyed [Stephen Spruiell]

Sallie Mae closes call center in Killeen, Texas, eliminating 500 jobs, in the wake of the Democrats' student-loan "reform," which was packaged with the health-care reconciliation bill.

Pass the bill to find out what's in it.

Apparently he thinks that's a bug, not a feature of streamlining the process and saving the government billions. As Jonathan Chait puts it,

Well, yeah. When you cut back on a wasteful government subsidy, some of the beneficiaries of that waste will lose their jobs. Wasting tens of billions of dollars on loan subsidies in order to support call center jobs is a very, very inefficient way to boost employment. It's funny to see conservatives turn into bleeding hearts when the victims are banks.