After four years of sidelining concerns about the federal debt out of deference to former President Donald Trump, Republican voters are rediscovering an issue that is driving their opposition to President Joe Biden and sparking enthusiasm about 2022.
Trump often bragged that he was the “king of debt,” heralding historically low interest rates as ripe for spending taxpayer dollars without worrying about burgeoning budget deficits. Republican voters, fans of Trump’s agenda and approving of his leadership, were content to follow along. With Biden spending trillions, on coronavirus relief, infrastructure, and more, Republican operatives expect GOP voters to recoil, channeling their renewed support for government austerity into participation in the midterm elections.
“Republican voters wanted to support Trump, so they tolerated [overspending.] They’re not going to, now,” said David McIntosh, president of the Club For Growth, a conservative group that advocates for balanced budgets.
Active in Republican primaries, the Club for Growth regularly polls GOP voters. McIntosh said the group’s data has found that discomfort with excessive spending never waned but that the party was simply pragmatic about the issue vis-à-vis Trump. With Biden now guiding the federal purse strings, McIntosh predicted that fiscal responsibility would return as a priority for Republican voters, who would use 2022 to put a check on the president.
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This view is proliferating among some of the party’s professional strategists.
“Big spending, especially since so much of it was politically motivated, will hurt the Democrats,” said Saul Anuzis, a Republican operative and former Republican National Committee member from Michigan. “There are too many examples of special interest pork that will be able to be used in [campaign] ads.”
Biden this month signed a $1.9 trillion spending plan. The law allocated an array of funds related to pandemic recovery, money for depleted state and local governments, public schools, vaccination programs, and direct stimulus payments to people in financial distress because of the struggling economy. Next up on the president’s agenda is a massive infrastructure package and then taxpayer outlays for an expansion of government support for childcare and health insurance coverage.
The polling for Biden’s initial spending legislation, dubbed the American Rescue Plan, was positive. Even a plurality of GOP voters approved, despite unanimous Republican opposition to the bill in Congress and claims by party leaders, some of them true, that the bill was a wish list of liberal priorities that had little to do with coronavirus relief. Investing in infrastructure, next on deck for Biden, was popular under Trump and remains so.
Democrats used to worry about charges of profligate spending leveled against them by Republicans. Especially with fiscally conscience voters in the all-important suburbs, the attack was potent. And in the case of past Democratic spending bills, the lack of Republican support sometimes became a problem for Democrats on Election Day. But Democrats, pointing to high marks for Biden in his first 100 days, believe the coronavirus and its effects on the economy upended that paradigm.
“I think it’s the opposite,” said Joe Trippi, a Democratic pollster. ”It’s tougher to explain why you didn’t want to put money in people’s pockets. That’s the more problematic case to be making right now.”
More than a year after Washington poured an unprecedented amount money into coronavirus recovery and economic stimulus to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, the federal debt has reached $28 trillion, greater than the value of the U.S. economy and a record. For decades, Republicans warned that allowing the debt to reach such levels would be calamitous: Inflation would rise, interest rates would skyrocket, tax hikes might be inevitable.
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But after consistent disregard for overspending by Democratic and Republican presidents alike and the failure of any of those negative repercussions to materialize, voters are less motivated by the issue, even if they claim it as a concern. That outlook is not limited to liberals who have historically dismissed GOP alarms about government spending but is shared by some on the Right and in the business community.
“It’s a policy issue with no impact,” said Bruce Haynes, a former Republican strategist who is chairman of public affairs at Sard Verbinnen & Company. “We just did a survey of business stakeholders on policy — employees and business decision makers. The federal budget deficit was a lower-half priority.”
