PD Editorial: Republicans’ new tax-cut shows deficit hypocrisy

If one thing has become blindingly clear about the Republican Party since 2000, it is this: The party only cares about the deficit when a Democrat is in the White House. If President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress get their way, they will prove it again.

When George W. Bush was president, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, “Deficits don't matter.” The Bush administration slashed taxes, increased military spending and turned a budget surplus into a once unspeakable trillion-dollar deficit by the time Bush left office with the economy in free fall.

Republicans in Congress didn't worry about paying for the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. They didn't worry about paying for a new Medicare drug benefit. They didn't worry about paying for multiple tax cuts.

Then Barack Obama took office, and suddenly deficits mattered again. Facing the worst recession since the Great Depression, Obama put together a stimulus package to try to jump-start the economy. Only three Senate Republicans voted for it.

Republicans fought Obama tooth and nail over the budget, shutting down the government and threatening to force the United States to default on its debt by refusing to increase the debt ceiling.

Now Trump is in the White House, and deficits apparently don't matter again.

Congress passed a $2.3 trillion tax cut - most of which is going to corporations and the very wealthy - and relaxed spending restrictions put in place during the Obama years.

The result is predictable. The deficit, which had been slashed from an unsustainable $1.4 trillion in 2009 to $585 billion in 2016, shot up. The Congressional Budget Office now says the deficit will hit $1 trillion again by the end of the upcoming fiscal year.

Are Republicans raising any alarms about this worrying forecast? To the contrary, they are proposing yet another revenue-draining tax cut.

The GOP's “tax reform 2.0” aims, among other things, to make permanent the individual tax cuts signed into law in December - adding an estimated $2 trillion to federal deficits over the next decade.

Republican nonchalance aside, this is an incredibly worrying trend. The last time the United States faced trillion-dollar deficits, the economy was in shambles. Revenue was way down, and the government was spending hundreds of billions of dollars in a successful effort to stimulate the economy.

Now we're nine years into the recovery, and Trump loves to boast about how well the economy is doing - taking full credit for trends that began well before he was elected.

The economy runs in cycles, though. This has been a long period of recovery. An eventual downturn is inevitable. If the U.S. is running trillion-dollar deficits during a booming economy, what will happen then? The federal government might not be able to pump any stimulus into a faltering economy, worsening and lengthening the next recession.

Republicans used to view themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility. That image has been shattered in the past 20 years, and their current course is truly unsustainable. Deficits can't only matter when lawmakers want to cut entitlement spending.

Trillion-dollar deficits during a downturn are unsustainable. Trillion-dollar deficits during a booming economy are irresponsible.

Republicans should want to reclaim the mantle of fiscal conservatism - even if they haven't earned it since President Ronald Reagan first ushered us into the era of 12-digit deficits. They can't do that unless deficits matter even when a Republican is in the White House.

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