The tax-cut con goes on
Why Social Security and Medicare will be on the ballot
What will happen if the blue wave in the midterm elections falls short? One answer is that the unindicted-co-conspirator in chief will continue to be protected from the law. And for those concerned with the survival of American democracy, that is the most important issue at stake. But significant bread-andbutter issues also will be on the ballot in November.
First, a Republican Congress, freed from the immediate threat of elections, almost certainly would do what it narrowly failed to do last year and repeal the Affordable Care Act. This would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance and would in particular hit those with pre-existing conditions. There’s a reason health care, not President Donald Trump, is the central theme of Democratic campaigns this year.
But the attack on the social safety net wouldn’t stop with a rollback of Obama-era expansion: Longstanding programs, including Social Security and Medicare, would also be fair game. Whosays so? Republicans.
In a recent interview on CNBC, Rep. Steve Stivers, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, declared that, given the size of the budget deficit, the federal governmentneeds to save money by cutting spending on social programs. When pressed, he admitted that included SocialSecurity and Medicare.
Many other major figures in the GOP, such as the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and multiple senators, have said the same thing. (Meanwhile, groups tied to Mr. Ryan are running attack ads accusing Democrats of planning to cut Medicare funding — but hey, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.)
Of course, Republicans calling for cuts in social spending to balance the budget are showing extraordinary chutzpah. The same Republicans now wringing their hands over budget deficits just exploded future deficits by enacting a huge tax cut primarily for corporationsand the wealthy.
It might seem shocking that only a few months later they’re once again posing as deficit hawks and calling for spending cuts — if it weren’t for the fact that this has been Republican budget strategy for decades. First, cut taxes. Then, bemoan the deficit created by those tax cuts and demand cuts in social spending. Lather, rinse, repeat.
This strategy, known as “starve the beast,” has been around since the 1970s, when Republican economists like Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman began declaring that the role of tax cuts in worsening budget deficits was a feature, not a bug. As Mr. Greenspan openly put it in 1978, the goal was to rein in spending with tax cuts that reduce revenue, then “trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending.”
It’strue that when tax cuts are on the table, their proponents tend to deny that they’ll increase the deficit, claiming that they’ll provide a miraculous boost to the economy so that tax receipts actually will rise. But there’s not a shred of evidence to support this claim, and it has never been clear whether anyone with political power has ever believed it. It’s just a smoke screen to help conceal the GOP’s true intentions: slashing the social safety net.
The puzzle is why Republicans keep getting away with this bait-and-switch.
Fifteen years ago I wrote a piece titled “The Tax-Cut Con,” describing what was even then a time-honored scam; it reads almost word for word as a description of Republican strategy today. YetI keep reading news analyses expressing bewilderment that strident deficit hawks in the Barack Obama years have so cheerfully signedon to a budget-busting tax cut under Mr. Trump. To say the obvious: These men were never deficit hawks; it wasalways a pose.
The gullibility of the news media and self-proclaimed centrists remains a remarkable story. Remember, Mr. Ryan, who was utterly orthodox in his determination to cut taxes on the rich while savaging programs for the poor and the middle class, even received an award for fiscal responsibility.
Which brings us back to the midterm elections. Rule of law is on the ballot. So is health care. But voters should realize that the threat to programs they count on is much broader: If Republicans holds their majority in Congress, Social Security and Medicare as we know them will be very much in danger.