By Catherine Rampell
Columnist |
January 17, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Breaking scientific news: Researchers have identified a previously unknown species in D.C. Like cicadas, this species stays underground for years at a time, typically in four- or eight-year intervals. Its members hide away until there is an auspicious change in the ecosystem. Then, they bust out and wreak havoc.
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This species: Republicans who care about deficits.
From 2017 through early 2021, members of the species lay dormant. Coincidentally, though, a nearly identical-looking sister species, Republicans who love debt, ruled Capitol Hill in their stead. With unified control of the House, Senate and White House, these debt-loving Republicans gleefully spilled red ink across the nation’s capital and beyond.
The GOP’s budgetary bloodletting began with a 2017 tax cut that cost $1.8 trillion. Their fiscal rampage then continued over the next few years, mostly on the other side of the ledger. In fact, between 2017 and early 2020, President Donald Trump added roughly as much to deficits through new spending as through tax cuts, appending his signature to more than $2 trillion in unfunded spending program expansions, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In total, over his first three years in office (and including a few more minor tax cuts), Trump added roughly $4.7 trillion to the federal debt above and beyond what the country had already been expected to borrow To be clear: This $4.7 trillion figure refers only to debt signed into law before the pandemic. If you include subsequent pandemic-related stimulus bills, the amount of new debt that Trump sealed with this signature would be several trillion dollars higher.
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During all that time, there was rarely a peep from the right side of the aisle about deficit concerns. The debt limit — the statutory ceiling on how much the federal government can borrow to pay off its existing bills — was raised several times with little fuss, and no conditions. No one tried to hold it hostage.
Then, the ecosystem changed. Specifically: A Democrat reentered the White House. Our newly identified varietal of Republicans resurfaced and seized control.
Today, the GOP is once again dominated by those creatures who say they care about debt, the same species (which we can now ID with hindsight!) that apparently ran things when Barack Obama was president. And once again, the full faith and credit of the United States is being held hostage, ostensibly in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Republicans — including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — are now refusing to make good on past spending obligations, including ones their own party voted for, unless Democrats agree to unspecified cuts to entitlements and other programs.
Democrats are unlikely to negotiate on these terms, which seems reasonable: After all, if Republicans carry out their threats, and force a U.S. debt default, Americans can expect not just disruptions to critical functions such as military salaries and bondholder payments. A global financial panic might ensue as well, because U.S. debt would be revealed to be much riskier than markets have long assumed.
Also, U.S. borrowing costs would likely increase if we’re revealed to be unreliable debtors; this would, over time, worsen the country’s debt burden.
I’ve often wondered why interviewers so rarely ask GOP lawmakers to reconcile their apparently newfound concern over deficits with the party’s many decisions to massively increase deficits. Perhaps media interlocutors fail to ask not because they’re lazy or ill-prepared, but because they were able to differentiate the two distinct species of Republicans earlier than the rest of us were.
Don’t get me wrong. The country has serious long-term fiscal challenges. Some of those challenges are indeed linked to the design of entitlement programs. Ideally, lawmakers from both parties would sit down and hash out some tough choices to ensure that Social Security and Medicare remain structurally sound, in light of rising health-care costs and the aging of the U.S. population.
And yet, Republicans profess interest in this endeavor only when the president has a “D” next to his name. One question for further scientific inquiry is: Why? That is, why don’t deficit-minded Republicans ever emerge when a fellow Republican occupies the White House?
Perhaps they know their belt-tightening proposals are unpopular, and so they’d rather not have a GOP-affiliated president preside over their passage.
Or maybe they’re not genuinely fiscally conservative at all, and are just looking for excuses to damage short-term economic conditions. Whatever the intentions, that was certainly a consequence of debt-ceiling brinkmanship in the Obama era, as well as the resulting austerity “compromise” that dragged on the recovery post-Great Recession.
It’s also a likely consequence this year, if these resurfacing swamp creatures flirt with default again.
Columnist |
January 17, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST
Breaking scientific news: Researchers have identified a previously unknown species in D.C. Like cicadas, this species stays underground for years at a time, typically in four- or eight-year intervals. Its members hide away until there is an auspicious change in the ecosystem. Then, they bust out and wreak havoc.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
This species: Republicans who care about deficits.
From 2017 through early 2021, members of the species lay dormant. Coincidentally, though, a nearly identical-looking sister species, Republicans who love debt, ruled Capitol Hill in their stead. With unified control of the House, Senate and White House, these debt-loving Republicans gleefully spilled red ink across the nation’s capital and beyond.
The GOP’s budgetary bloodletting began with a 2017 tax cut that cost $1.8 trillion. Their fiscal rampage then continued over the next few years, mostly on the other side of the ledger. In fact, between 2017 and early 2020, President Donald Trump added roughly as much to deficits through new spending as through tax cuts, appending his signature to more than $2 trillion in unfunded spending program expansions, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
In total, over his first three years in office (and including a few more minor tax cuts), Trump added roughly $4.7 trillion to the federal debt above and beyond what the country had already been expected to borrow To be clear: This $4.7 trillion figure refers only to debt signed into law before the pandemic. If you include subsequent pandemic-related stimulus bills, the amount of new debt that Trump sealed with this signature would be several trillion dollars higher.
Follow Catherine Rampell's opinionsFollow
During all that time, there was rarely a peep from the right side of the aisle about deficit concerns. The debt limit — the statutory ceiling on how much the federal government can borrow to pay off its existing bills — was raised several times with little fuss, and no conditions. No one tried to hold it hostage.
Then, the ecosystem changed. Specifically: A Democrat reentered the White House. Our newly identified varietal of Republicans resurfaced and seized control.
Today, the GOP is once again dominated by those creatures who say they care about debt, the same species (which we can now ID with hindsight!) that apparently ran things when Barack Obama was president. And once again, the full faith and credit of the United States is being held hostage, ostensibly in the name of fiscal responsibility.
Republicans — including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — are now refusing to make good on past spending obligations, including ones their own party voted for, unless Democrats agree to unspecified cuts to entitlements and other programs.
Democrats are unlikely to negotiate on these terms, which seems reasonable: After all, if Republicans carry out their threats, and force a U.S. debt default, Americans can expect not just disruptions to critical functions such as military salaries and bondholder payments. A global financial panic might ensue as well, because U.S. debt would be revealed to be much riskier than markets have long assumed.
Also, U.S. borrowing costs would likely increase if we’re revealed to be unreliable debtors; this would, over time, worsen the country’s debt burden.
I’ve often wondered why interviewers so rarely ask GOP lawmakers to reconcile their apparently newfound concern over deficits with the party’s many decisions to massively increase deficits. Perhaps media interlocutors fail to ask not because they’re lazy or ill-prepared, but because they were able to differentiate the two distinct species of Republicans earlier than the rest of us were.
Don’t get me wrong. The country has serious long-term fiscal challenges. Some of those challenges are indeed linked to the design of entitlement programs. Ideally, lawmakers from both parties would sit down and hash out some tough choices to ensure that Social Security and Medicare remain structurally sound, in light of rising health-care costs and the aging of the U.S. population.
And yet, Republicans profess interest in this endeavor only when the president has a “D” next to his name. One question for further scientific inquiry is: Why? That is, why don’t deficit-minded Republicans ever emerge when a fellow Republican occupies the White House?
Perhaps they know their belt-tightening proposals are unpopular, and so they’d rather not have a GOP-affiliated president preside over their passage.
Or maybe they’re not genuinely fiscally conservative at all, and are just looking for excuses to damage short-term economic conditions. Whatever the intentions, that was certainly a consequence of debt-ceiling brinkmanship in the Obama era, as well as the resulting austerity “compromise” that dragged on the recovery post-Great Recession.
It’s also a likely consequence this year, if these resurfacing swamp creatures flirt with default again.
