Back when Republicans were trying to sell America on the idea of their gigantic tax cuts last year, they insisted that they would be revenue-neutral or possibly even save the country money based on how many more people the “job creators” would hire and how much of their tax savings they would reinvest in research, development, and construction. But even during the strongest push for public approval for the tax cuts, most still referred to them collectively as the “GOP Tax Scam.”
That’s never a good thing to hang around the neck of a political party.
But just as was the case during the Reagan years and the Bush years, massive tax cuts primarily directed at the already rich didn’t produce any such windfall for America, because corporate America did no such thing: They pocketed the savings, gave huge bonuses to their corporate employees and CEOs, and added to their already-enormous wealth.
Republicans, however, knew that’s what would happen. You’d have to studiously ignore history to not understand that “trickle-down economics” is a myth made up by the GOP to reward their donors in an endless cycle of giving to elect Republicans, who legislate to give back, everyone getting rich in the process.
That means they were lying the entire time, and that Mitch McConnell specifically was lying when he told reporters in his home state of Kentucky last December:
I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue neutral. In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”
So why would he lie like that? Well, aside from constant lying being a seeming requisite for membership in the Republican Party for the last decade or so, it points to an agenda. Republicans want that money gone from tax collections, so they can cut spending elsewhere, because “reducing the size and scope of government” is one of their principal aims. And what they’d like to cut most of all is anything the benefits people who don’t vote for them or can’t donate and keep them in power.
That means Social Security and Medicare.
And Mitch made it very clear that he means exactly that, when he remarked to Bloomberg News on the massive deficit increase of 77 percent over 2015, the year he became Majority Leader — but instead of correctly and appropriately assigning blame for the huge deficit to the tax cuts enacted by the GOP late last year, he instead blamed Social Security and Medicare.
In fact, he knows full well how toxic it would be to Republicans to try and dismantle the programs alone while they control all the levers of power in Washington DC:
It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem. It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”
But that’s exactly what they will do if they retain control of Congress after the midterm elections in just a few short weeks.
I think it would be safe to say that the single biggest disappointment of my time in Congress has been our failure to address the entitlement issue, and it’s a shame, because now the Democrats are promising ‘Medicare for all.’ I mean, my gosh, we can’t sustain the Medicare we have at the rate we’re going and that’s the height of irresponsibility.”
What he leaves unsaid is that “the rate we’re going” at is because he can’t stop giving tax cuts to the filthy rich.
Featured image via screen capture
