Republicans' "willful stupidity" on budget deficits

It really should not be that hard to understand:   when you spend money you do not have, you incur debt.   And that is what happens when the U.S. budget spends more than it takes in in revenue.

When you have debt, you have to pay interest.   This fiscal year 2018, we will pay $523 billion in interest on the national debt.

Now we know that government budgets are not quite as simple as a family budget -- because financial markets are involved, monetary policy, the Federal Reserve interest rates that can be manipulated -- plus our vast borrowing power and ability to just print more money.   It is indeed complex.

Deficit spending is often a good idea to bolster a faltering economy.   But we're doing it now in a booming economy.   Why? 

Republicans aren't generally considering all those complexities in their public explanations.   They just tell the bald -face lie that tax cuts pay for themselves.   That may be true when you give them to people who will spend the money on purchases, which in turn stimulate the economy.

The same could be true with tax cuts to manufacturing companies that will create new jobs, build new plants, modernize old ones, invest in infrastructure that makes them more efficient. 

But that's not what happened with the recent Republican tax cut, which mostly benefited very wealthy people and corporations (corporate taxes went from 35% to 21%) -- with a little bit for the working class so they could claim that it covered them too.

So what happened?   The deficit in the latest budget jumped by 17%.  Corporations invested little in the above mentioned things.   They mostly used it for stock buy-backs -- and gave it out as dividends to share holders.   And the wealthy?   They just put it into their investment portfolios.   And all of it charged to our creditors, like China which holds more than a trillion dollars in U.S. debt.

Remember the old fairy-dust about "trickle down economics"?  It didn't work then either.

So now Republicans don't really have "tax cuts" as a popular issue to run on, because most voters didn't get anything much from them.   What are they saying instead?    Mitch McConnell came up with the tired, tired meme that it's the entitlements (Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare) that's the problem.   We spend too much money on the social safety net.

Why are we not surprised?   Because Paul Ryan had said this years ago -- that his main objective as House Speaker was to reform those entitlements.  By "reform," he means cut the funding.  And, since they are popular, you can't just go in and cut them.   You have to have a reason.

Ergo:   you cut taxes, create a huge deficit, a ballooning interest payment on the debt, and then complain about the deficit and interest on the national debt ($523 billion for 2018) -- and "explain" that's why we have to cut spending, beginning with the entitlements.

They've tried it before;   they tried it again this year.   And we cannot let them get away with it.

Go vote.   Vote early.   Vote for sanity and compassion in government.

Ralph