The Republican Party's Real Game

 

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.