The Deficit

As Donald Trump prepares to leave the Oval Office the Republicans in Congress are gearing up for another run at the budget deficit.  Lest anyone has lost his or her memory, Republicans become deficit hawks whenever a Republican is no longer President.  In fact, Republicans were elected President by running against deficit spending.  Ronald Reagan’s prime campaign promise was to eliminate the Jimmy Carter deficit that amounted to almost $50 billion dollars.  Of course when Reagan left the Oval Office, he handed his predecessor a $150 billion dollar deficit, tripling the Carter “tax and spend” Democratic budget “mismanagement”.  Needless to further remind you but Republicans also accused Bill Clinton of mismanaging the budget and did so by ignoring he was the only president in recent times that actually presented a budget surplus.  Clinton was followed by George W. Bush who decided that the surplus belonged to the taxpayers rather than reducing the country’s debt and promptly ran more deficit spending primed by the “Bush Tax Cuts”.  When Obama was inaugurated Republicans once again spent their time worrying about the big, bad deficit.  Of course, once Trump sat in the Oval Office the deficit was no longer a Republican problem to the extent Trump’s only legacy will be his $1.7 trillion dollar tax cut.  That trillion dollar deficit, the highest in the nation’s history was followed by a few mor trillion dollars occasioned by Trump’s incompetent managing of the pandemic/Covid-19 crisis.  Now, before Biden is even acknowledged as having defeated Trump preventing a 2^nd Trump term in office the Republican deficit hawks are already starting to beat the deficit drum (conveniently ignoring reality the now-massive, record deficit occurred while a Republican President held the nation’s wallet.)  So be warned for a minimum of the next four years debt and deficit will be on the lips of every Republican member of Congress, Senate and House alike.  The economic need created by Republican mismanagement of the Covid-19 is already being ignored by the very Republicans whose mismanagement created the economic need for economic relief to those individuals and businesses economically impacted by Coid-19.  Republicans are refusing to acknowledge there is a need for many to economically survive continuing to try to label any assistance as stimulus and pretend the need for economic survival is not a “real problem” but a result of bad personal choice.  To point out Republican economic hypocrisy is a waste of time since economic hypocrisy is the bedrock of Republican economic policy.  Give tax cuts to the wealthiest 10 % of America and cut food stamps and other economic assistance to the bottom 50% of Americans to pay for the tax cuts given the top 10%.  And, craft tax legislation that results in the top 10% paying income and payroll taxes on less than 80% of their gross income while requiring the bottom 50% to be taxed (income and payroll) on every dollar they may receive.  When will the nation’s voters wise up and realize the deficit hawks don’t give a shit about the size of the deficit and only use that to get the gullible and ignorant to vote them back in office where they can go about increasing the deficit in true Republican fashion.