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Redstate...
Do Republicans Care
About the Deficit or Not?
Posted by Daniel Horowitz
Thursday, February 16th
Republicans who seek our support during an election cycle declare
emphatically that they will deal with the deficit upon being
elected. Once elected, however, they far too often evince nothing
but apathy towards efforts to solve our budget crisis. Worse yet,
they even work assiduously to create new deficits.
Ever since Republicans won control of the House in 2010, instead of
looking for spending cuts to offset existing deficits, they are
constantly looking for ways to create new deficits, albeit with the
fervent pledge to offset those new deficits. Yesterday, several
lawmakers showed us just how indifferent they are to deficit spending.
Commenting on concerns of deficit spending, John Mica, the author of
the House highway bill, offered this caviler response: “Honestly I
don’t pay that much attention to the financing portion because it’s not
mine. But they’ve promised to find ways to fund this and so far they’ve
kept their word. It will be done. It will pass. Then I will say
Amen.”
Yes, we understand that Mica is Chairman of the Transportation
Committee, not Ways and Means or Appropriations. But does he
really regard the cost as such an ancillary footnote to the bill that
he need not consider it when drafting the underlying bill?
On the Senate side, Politico asked Senator Thune what he thought of
their version of the highway bill:
“I think by and large if they want to get an extension of this for two
years, rather than doing these short-term extensions, this is probably
the best shot we have,” Thune said. Is it your sense the bill will
pass? “I think so. I shouldn’t probably say that,” Thune said. “The
Finance Committee, if they tweak the offsets a little bit, you know it
probably picks up a considerable number of Republicans and I think a
lot of Democrats.”
Yeah, let’s just pass this bill, which overspends its revenue source by
43%; we’ll tweak it a little here and there to make up the difference.
We are witnessing the same thing with the extenders package.
Let’s put aside the payroll tax cut for a moment. There is an
intra-conservative debate over whether this sort of “stimulus” tax cut
should require offsets or not. Nevertheless, we all agree that
the increased spending on UI and Medicare doc fix should be offset with
other spending cuts. The point of cutting the payroll tax loose
from the rest of the package was so Republicans can unilaterally pass
the payroll tax cut, while refusing to spend more on UI and doc fix
unless they are completely offset. Yet, Republicans are agreeing
to a conference report that will fill in that 10-month $50 billion
deficit with a patchwork of offsets over 10 years. Spend now; pay
later.
[As an aside, they are also planning to vote for the conference report
tomorrow, a violation of that pesky little pledge to post all
legislation 72 hours before consideration on the floor. Because
this is a conference report, any such point of order against the bill
offered by a conservative will be waived.]
The voters did not elect Republicans to propagate this “spend now, pay
later” mentality. They elected Republicans to end this credulous
form of governance. If these Republicans will not exercise their
mandate, they’ll need to be replaced with a better crop. It’s
that simple.
Read this and other articles at Redstate
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