GOP should match rhetoric with behavior

The U.S. could face $1 trillion budget deficits while Congress and the White House are controlled by the GOP.

Republican leaders have delivered on their promises of tax relief for the vast majority of Americans.

Four in five Americans are expected to receive tax cuts under the plan passed by Congress last week.

Though the plan is far from perfect, for the millions of American workers who will keep more of their money, tax reform will bring tangible benefits.

However, there are tradeoffs.

While millions of Americans will receive a boost to their bank accounts, the tax cuts will also necessarily mean less money for the federal government, adding to growing budget deficits and ultimately the national debt.

Before the passage of tax reform, the federal budget was already severely unbalanced, with federal spending far exceeding federal revenues.

Tax reform without fiscal discipline and responsibility from Congress will only exacerbate that problem in a big way.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax reform plan signed last week by President Trump will reduce federal revenues by $135 billion next year and $280 billion in 2019.

That’s on top of prior projections from the Congressional Budget Office released in June that the deficits in 2018 and 2019 would hit $563 billion and $689 billion, respectively.

In other words, the nation finds itself looking at the prospect of $1 trillion budget deficits while the Congress and White House are controlled by Republicans, who at least rhetorically concern themselves with fiscal responsibility.

The pressure should now be on Republican leaders to match their rhetoric with their behavior.

Just as the average American can’t get away with spending more while making less, the Congress shouldn’t either.

Achieving this is easier said than done given how profligate and far-reaching the federal government has become. It’s one thing to talk about reducing the deficit and reducing federal spending, but the specifics can be much trickier.

For instance, House Speaker Paul Ryan has suggested in recent weeks that reform of Medicare would be on the agenda in 2018, describing the program as the “biggest entitlement that’s got to have reform.”

However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dismissed such ideas as infeasible. “I think that Democrats will not be interested in entitlement reform,” McConnell said on Dec. 21, after the passage of tax reform. “So I would not expect to see that on the agenda.”

With entitlement reform off the table and Republicans committed to greater, not less, military spending, it is difficult to see where else the Congress might find cost savings.

Efforts to root out “waste, fraud and abuse” have been mostly talk, and nothing is achieved by cutting small line items such as the contribution to public broadcasting.

Even if the tax cuts produce robust economic growth and greater revenue than projected, Congress must guard against the likelihood of greater spending that would continue to increase the nation’s debt.

At some point, Congress, if not Republican leaders, must correct the growing imbalance between spending and revenues.

Failure to do so will only put the United States deeper into the red and perhaps in the future force devastating spending cuts and tax hikes to pay for the mistakes of the past.

— Southern California News Group, Digital First Media

The nation faces the prospect of $1 trillion budget deficits while Congress is controlled by Republicans, who at least rhetorically concern themselves with fiscal responsibility.