You knew this was coming—all those supposed conservative "deficit hawks" who railed against President Obama's budgets suddenly jumping aboard the tax cut train on the way to a mountain of national debt. Well, it's happening. Take Donald Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney, for instance, once "one of the House’s proudest fiscal hawks."
“Our OMB guy, I say this with humor, what happened to him?” [Republican Sen. Bob] Corker said in an interview. “Do you understand what I’m saying? He used to be the fiscal hawk.”
In fact, this Politico article is chock full of Republicans explaining their newfound embrace of deficit spending. Here's one dodge: It's all about Republicans "sacrificing" for the good of taxpayers.
“In order to make good on our campaign tax promise, there probably are going to be some sacrifices made from an ideological perspective,” said senior House Budget Committee member Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a longtime deficit hawk.
“I believe that the biggest remedy for our fiscal situation is growth in the economy,” he added. “I am not averse to some deficit spending in order to create long-term sustained growth.”
How very charitable of Womack. Then there's this one: If you just look at the red ink from the right angle, it turns black, I swear.
“I believe Corker is going to get to the place where I am: If you do the models and look at this right, it pays for itself," said Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.).
Or how about this: We don't have the guts to make tough decisions on spending, so the only choice left to us is to cut taxes and hope for the best.
[GOP Rep. Mark] Meadows also predicted Republicans will never have the nerve to cut spending, so they have to pass steep tax cuts to spur growth: “What you have to do is you have to mitigate the damage by being as aggressive as you can be on tax rates, which would lessen the damage of our lack of fiscal responsibility over time.”
Right, about lessening that irresponsible damage by spurring growth.
Most economists say it's unlikely that a multi-trillion-dollar tax package will pay for itself with sustained, long-term growth.
That’s actually an understatement. Some economists call the White House math “absolutely crazy.”
But Leonard Burman, a fellow and co-founder of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC), says that’s “utterly implausible.” His colleague, Steven Rosenthal, says Republicans are giving away $2 trillion in corporate tax cuts while the White House “speculates” that wages will rise in the long run. “Trickle-down economics on steroids,” he says. “Absolutely crazy.”