If you are a conservative and are
not wealthy and are supporting the Republican Party, you have been played. That
is the primary lesson you should take from the ongoing debt ceiling “crisis.”
Oh, where to start? Let me begin
by including a link to a guest editorial I had published last week in the Salt
Lake Tribune. I began that editorial by mentioning my “correspondence” with my
representative in Congress, John Curtis. I have been sending him messages on
his website, encouraging him to support raising the debt ceiling without taking
the U.S. economy hostage. He responds by emailing me form letters explaining
why he supports demanding large spending cuts, or else. In one form letter, he
used a common Republican analogy to justify this nonsense, comparing the
federal budget to a family budget. You can read my response to this bit of absurdity
in the editorial.
What I want to do with this post
is examine the real priorities of the Republican Party and the dangerous game
of deception they are playing. If you have been paying attention to the culture
war the GOP has been waging, you might think that the gravest dangers to our
nation are schools that teach the truth about racism, transgender girls playing
sports, books that might make Puritans squeamish, and, well, Mickey Mouse.
The right-wing echo chamber is
also making people deathly afraid of something they call the “woke mind virus,”
whatever that is. We’re not really sure, because it can include everything from
being concerned about an overheating planet and our unique American level of
gun violence to being in favor of expanding, yes, wind power (see the state of Texas).
But these are merely deflections.
They want to get their supporters all riled up about these culture war issues
so that they won’t pay attention to how harmful real Republican priorities are
to rank-and-file Republicans.
Fortunately, for the observant,
the ongoing debt-ceiling debacle has torn away the shroud and revealed exactly
what Republican priorities really are, and they haven’t changed in over 40
years. What did the Republicans demand, initially, in the legislation they
passed to force negotiations over raising the debt ceiling? (And of course we
don’t even need to mention that the debt was not an issue at all during the Trump
presidency, when the GOP was more than happy to pass a senseless and unfunded
tax cut that Trump’s own treasury department estimated would add $2.3 trillion
to the debt over 10 years.) But let’s look at what the GOP legislation would have
done.
As Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank summed it up, using Virginia representative Jen Kiggans (who voted for
the legislation) as an example: “In Kiggans’s Virginia, the legislation she
just backed would strip tax incentives that go to the likes of Dominion Energy,
which is building a $9.8 billion offshore wind project in her
district. She also voted to ax solar and electric-vehicle incentives for
hundreds of thousands of Virginians, and tax breaks projected to bring $11.6
billion in clean-power investment to the commonwealth.
“In addition, the bill she
supported sets spending targets that require an immediate 22 percent cut to all
‘non-defense discretionary spending’—that’s border security, the FBI, airport
security, air traffic control, highways, agriculture programs, veterans’ health
programs, food stamps, Medicaid, medical research, national parks and much
more. If they want to cut less than 22 percent in some of those areas, they’ll
have to cut more than 22 percent in others.
“According to an administration
analysis of what the 22 percent cuts translate to, Kiggans is now on
record supporting:
“Shutting down at least two air
traffic control towers in Virginia.
“Jeopardizing outpatient medical
care for 162,300 Virginia veterans.
“Throwing up to 175,000 Virginians
off food stamps and ending food assistance for another 25,000 through the
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
“Cutting or ending Pell Grants for
162,900 Virginia college students.
“Eliminating Head Start for 3,600
Virginia children and child care for another 1,300 children.
“Adding at least two months to
wait times for Virginia seniors seeking assistance with Social Security and
Medicare.
“Denying opioid treatment for more
than 600 Virginians.
‘Ending 180 days of rail
inspections per year and 1,350 fewer miles of track inspected.
“Kicking 13,400 Virginia families
off rental assistance.”
Spending cuts look a little
different when you get specific like Milbank did. These spending cuts would, of
course, ripple through the economy, likely causing a severe recession.
Now, as I mention in my editorial,
I’m fully in favor of getting our budget under control. But what does that
mean? In my editorial, I cite an article posted on March 27, 2023, by the
nonpartisan Center for American Progress. It is written by Bobby Kogan and is
titled “Tax Cuts Are Primarily Responsible for the Increasing Debt Ratio.”
The main gist of this article is
that prior to the Bush tax cuts, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did
projections of both federal revenues and expenses and projected that the debt
ratio would decline indefinitely. “In other words, right up until before the
Bush tax cuts were made permanent, the CBO was projecting that, even with an
aging population and ever-growing health care costs, revenues were nonetheless
expected to keep up with program costs.” Interestingly, since the Bush tax
cuts, expenses have actually been lower than the CBO’s projections, but
revenues have been far lower, so actually, the rising debt ratio is more than
100 percent due to the Bush and Trump tax cuts, not due to out-of-control
spending.
The CAP article also has a chart
showing the OECD countries’ taxes as a percentage of GDP, with the U.S. far
below the OECD average. (I had an op-ed in the Trib a couple of years ago about
this.) In short, the problem with the national debt is not spending; it is
revenue. And since the Republicans absolutely refuse to increase taxes, even on
the ultra-rich, it is easy to see what their real values and priorities are.
The culture-war issues are just a smoke screen. What Republicans still want more
than anything is to funnel as much money to the wealthy as possible. And the
increasing inequality is utterly staggering.
Heather Cox Richardson, whose
daily email you really ought to subscribe to (it’s free), included the
following on May 23, 2023: “When Ronald Reagan called for tax cuts in 1980, he
argued that tax cuts would concentrate money in private hands, enabling
investors flush with cash to build the economy. That growth would keep tax
revenues stable even with the lower rates. That was the argument, but it never
came to pass. In fact, a 2022 study by political economists David Hope and
Julian Limberg shows that ‘tax cuts for the rich . . . do not have any
significant effect on economic growth or unemployment,’ but they do ‘lead to
higher income inequality in both the short- and medium-term.’
“Indeed, Estelle Sommeiller and Mark
Price of the Economic Policy Institute, an independent, nonprofit think tank,
noted in 2018 that 1% of all families in the U.S. take home 21 percent of all the
income in the U.S., making 26.3 times more than the bottom 99%, whose average
income is slightly more than $50,000 a year. On average in the U.S., someone
would need an annual income of slightly more than $420,000 to be a member of that
top 1%. In 2020, annual wages for the top 1% grew by 7.3% while those in the
bottom 90% grew just 1.7%.
“A 2020 study by Carter C Price
and Kathryn A. Edwards of the RAND Corporation showed that the changing
economic distribution systems of the past forty years [since the Reagan tax cuts]
have moved a staggering $50 trillion upward, out of the hands of the bottom 90%
of Americans. (The national debt is currently about $31.5 trillion.)”
But Republicans are still
determined to cut taxes on the wealthy, further accelerating the inequality and
increasing the debt. As the CAP article points out, “Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL)
has also introduced legislation to make permanent President Trump’s 2017 tax
cuts, at a cost of roughly $2.6 trillion over the next decade.” So don’t
be fooled when the Republicans feign concern for the national debt. What they
really want is to further increase the wealth flowing to the top and to cut spending
that benefits those at the bottom. Sadly, this includes a majority of the
voters who keep them in power. If you are among that majority, all I can say is
wise up. You’ve been played.
