The Republicans…

The true culprits are the House speaker, Paul Ryan, and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell. Both are self-proclaimed deficit hawks. “In this generation, a defining responsibility of government is to steer our nation clear of a debt crisis while there is still time,” Mr. Ryan declared in 2012. But recent actions have revealed that the real game is to cut taxes on businesses and the wealthy, and use the resulting deficits as a pretext for cutting programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security that benefit the poor and the middle class.

President Trump has been a bystander in this whole process. He signed the bill, though it ignores many of the administration’s requests by, for example, increasing spending on the National Institutes of Health rather than cutting it.

All told, the Republican tax cuts and the budget deal will nearly double the federal deficit to $1.19 trillion in 2019. While no credible analyst doubts that the federal government, which spends about $4 trillion a year, can make its debt payments, the growing deficit will make it harder for the government to respond to future recessions or to make responsible spending decisions. It’s a sure bet that, were the economy to tank, Mr. Ryan and his ilk would argue that the country couldn’t afford to increase government spending to get it going again because the deficit was already too large.