Calling Bull$hit
It is completely true that the Republican Party has spoken out against deficit spending and the national debt…when they were not in charge. When they are, like they are now and were for much of the Bush Administration, suddenly deficits don’t matter. Take the following quote as proof “If there is one thing that Ronald Reagan has taught us, it’s that deficits don’t matter”. That is a statement made by former VP Dick Cheney. The narrative that Republicans are fiscally responsible is a fallacy that has been spewed by right wing politicians and right wing media for decades. There has not been any validity to this claim during my lifetime (I was born in 1971). The notion that the Trump budget is a deviation from that trend is completely inaccurate. The degree to which the Trump Admin is accelerating the debt is alarming, but claiming that this is a new phenomenon is nothing short of Bull$hit.
President Trump on Monday will offer a budget plan that falls far short of eliminating the government’s deficit over 10 years, conceding that huge tax cuts and new spending increases make this goal unattainable, three people familiar with the proposal said.
Eliminating the budget deficit over 10 years has been a North Star for the Republican Party for several decades, and GOP lawmakers took the government to the brink of default in 2011 when they demanded a vote on a amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit the federal government from spending more than it takes in through revenues.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), when he used to chair the House Budget Committee, routinely proposed tax and spending outlines that would eliminate the deficit over 10 years, even though critics said his changes would lead to a severe curtailment in government programs.
In 2013, Ryan proposed $4.6 trillion in cuts over 10 years, an amount he said was sufficient to eliminating the deficit. Those changes were not adopted by Congress or supported by the Obama administration.
The White House and GOP leaders have largely jettisoned goals like this since Trump took office last year. Trump’s budget plan will call for a range of spending cuts that reduces the growth of the deficit by $3 trillion over 10 years, but it would not eliminate the deficit entirely, said the people familiar with the proposal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the plans before they’re publicly unveiled.
GOP leaders have prioritized the tax cut plan and a major increase to military spending over their past calls for eliminating the deficit. A vocal minority of GOP lawmakers have complained about this shift, but they proved no match for the bulk of the party last week when spending levels for the next two years were expanded.
