BREAKING! Republicans Don’t Care About Deficits

Here’s another key takeaway from the story about the Freedom [sic] Caucus I referenced earlier:

Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus may be shifting their uncompromising, tough budget stance under President-elect Donald Trump, according to a report in the National Review.

According to the piece, there is discussion underway to accept that just 50 percent of Trump’s infrastructure bill would have to be offset with spending cuts elsewhere– a precedent that they never would have accepted under President Barack Obama.

After Trump was first elected, members of the House Freedom Caucus were vocal about their opposition to some of Trump’s costly legislative priorities like a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Needless to say, by “50%” they mean “0%.”

Republicans are going to massively cut upper-class taxes, and they will dole out some more gooodies to business. They will cut social programs, perhaps quite drastically, but not by nearly enough to pay for the tax cuts. And they just don’t care.

To dream in technicolor for a minute, perhaps the next time (if any) Democrats take over the federal government again, they will remember this. Under the current partisan configuration, caring about deficits makes you a massive sucker. All that cost trimming done to make the ACA fiscally responsible? All gone. Even if some elements of the program survive, the tax hikes are gone. And if the subsidies had been more generous, the better parts would be more likely to survive. It was bad politics and accomplished less than nothing substantively in the end. When Dems get power, they should pass what programs they think need passing, raise whatever taxes can be raised, but don’t worry about deficits. Republicans don’t care, and more importantly whatever voters think in the abstract they don’t care in practice either.