REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY: THE NATIONAL DEBT
“President Obama has doubled our national debt to more than $19 trillion, and growing.” So said Donald J. Trump in his RNC acceptance speech on July 21, 2016. Really?
Last time I checked, the constitutional responsibility for passing federal budgets rests with Congress, not the President. Republicans have controlled the legislative branch of government with outright majorities in the House for the past 6 years, in the Senate for the past 2, and with virtual veto power in the Senate for all but the first 40 days of the first 6 years of President Obama’s tenure in office. I’ll explain:
Barack Obama entered office supported by what appeared to be comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress (257-178 in the House, 59-41 in the Senate, including the 2 independents who tended to vote with the Democratic caucus). However, the legislative honeymoon proved to be surprisingly short-lived. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), forced by terminal illness to withdraw from the Senate about 40 days into the Obama administration, reduced the Democratic majority to 58. Kennedy died the following August, triggering a special election in January 2010, won by Republican Scott Brown in a stunning upset. The Democratic majority was later increased to 59 with Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch from Republican to Democrat. Ironically, Senator Brown’s success in winning what had been a reliably Democratic seat for decades, provided Republicans with the 41 votes they needed, according to Senate rules, to successfully filibuster any Democrat-sponsored legislation they didn’t like – a privilege “the Party of No” (or the GnOP) would abuse liberally, no pun intended.
Bottom line: Republicans have controlled the budget process throughout Obama’s presidency. Consequently, Republicans in Congress bear the responsibility for the doubling of the federal debt of which Mr. Trump spoke.
How have they exercised that control? Placing their return to power above the national interest (“Our first priority is to make Obama a one-term President”), Republicans have routinely rejected the President’s annual budget proposals (“dead on arrival”) and instead, passed budgets conforming to their “conservative” ideology:
· No new income tax increases on the wealthy (the expiration of the Bush tax cuts automatically increased the top bracket from 35% to 39.6%) and
· Sustaining military spending at bloated levels bequeathed by G. W. Bush (between $610 billion and $721 billion) more than all discretionary spending for the remaining agencies of government and about twice the $335 billion defense budget Bush inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001.
Having taken two of the three major legislative budget deficit remedies off the table, Republicans cannot hope to close recent and projected deficit gaps averaging about $500 billion per year by slashing discretionary spending. To do so would wipe out the discretionary spending budgets of all the other government agencies combined.
Consequently, as things now stand Uncle Sam faces the prospect of deficits in the order of $500 billion as far as the eye can see according to the Congressional Budget Office. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/51790
If Donald Trump is elected, it will only get worse. In his acceptance speech, Trump promised:
· “The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.”
· “We will take care of our great Veterans like they have never been taken care of before.”
· “We must have the best intelligence gathering operation in the world.”
· “We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration”
· “We will completely rebuild our depleted military”
Fulfilling all of these promises would cost many billions of dollars in added government spending. Given Trump’s promise to enact “The largest tax reduction of any candidate who has declared for the presidential race this year – Democrat or Republican,” where will the money come from?
Essentially, Trump and the Republicans are proposing Reaganomics on steroids: massive tax cuts and surges in government spending. The outcome of Reagan’s (and now Trump’s) “Voodoo Economics,” clearly demonstrated over the past 35 years, is skyrocketing budget deficits and a swelling national debt burdening younger generations, while the rich get stupendously richer, the poor desperately poorer and the middle class marks time. Is this any way to “make America great again”?