Republicans’ plan to Make Deficits Great Again is not merely hypocritical. It’s also terrible policy. Or at least terribly, breathtakingly ill-timed.
In 2009, a few weeks after Barack Obama took office, a Republican political movement — one supposedly grounded in fiscal conservatism — was born.
Sure, the country was teetering on the edge of another Great Depression, a circumstance that would normally call for aggressive fiscal stimulus. Tea party Republicans, however, demanded belt-tightening. They wanted a government that stopped spending beyond its means. That meant, above all, reducing federal debt.
The huge increase is partly driven by the ginormous, plutocratic tax cut Congress passed in December, as well as less-noticed, smaller rounds of tax cuts that have passed since then.