The tax cut law is proving more popular by the day, and for good reason. It’s been a boon to workers and families. So if you’re a Democratic senator who opposed tax reform, how do you justify your no vote to constituents?
Simple: You reinvent yourself as a deficit hawk.
Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., declared the bill would “explode” the debt. “It will put nearly $1.5 trillion on the country’s credit card, passing those costs on to our children and grandchildren,” she said.
Her words were echoed by Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., who said he voted against the tax bill because the added debt would be “paid back with interest by our children and grandchildren.”
And Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., similarly stated she could not support the bill because it “explodes our deficit.”
Yet just a few weeks after voting no on tax reform, those same senators voted “yes” on the Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2018, a package that not only blows a huge hole in the deficit but also contains billions in special interest tax giveaways.
At $1.5 trillion, the cost of the budget deal would be roughly equal to what the Joint Committee on Taxation, the official congressional scorekeeper for tax legislation, said tax reform would cost over that same period.
The budget deal also retroactively extended $11 billion in expired corporate welfare tax provisions — the so-called “tax extenders” — that give preferential tax treatment to special interests like Puerto Rican rum distillers, “green energy” producers, racehorse owners, and Hollywood film and TV productions, among others.
How can tax reform opponents defend this hypocrisy? When it comes to cutting taxes on hardworking Americans, the debt’s a huge problem; but when it comes to spending more to grow government or give niche special interest tax breaks, the debt suddenly doesn’t matter. Why is $1.5 trillion in added debt a deal breaker when it comes to lower tax rates, but no big deal when it comes to spending more on government?
Anyone seriously concerned about deficits knows that tax cuts are not the problem. The United States didn’t rack up $21 trillion in debt by cutting taxes. In fact, every major tax cut going back to the Kennedy administration has led to stronger economic growth and higher federal revenues over time. The real driver of the debt has been the unchecked growth in government spending.
This simple truth is evidently lost on those senators who voted against tax reform. They routinely cast aside any concern for the debt when given the opportunity to expand the size and scope of government.
How else does one explain McCaskill’s vote for former President Barack Obama’s budget-busting economic “stimulus” in 2009? When the bill was under consideration, it was estimated to cost $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2019. The Congressional Budget Office later increased this estimate to $830 billion.
Before that, McCaskill had voted for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout, which she later called “a genius decision in many ways.”
The about-face on deficit spending by Heitkamp and Donnelly shouldn’t come as a surprise, either. In 2015, both senators voted in favor of a behemoth $1.15 trillion budget deal stuffed with billions of dollars in special interest subsidies. These included many of the same tax extenders approved in this year’s budget, like the giveaways for green energy and rum distilleries.
Senators who voted against tax relief may claim to care about deficits, but their repeated votes in favor of higher spending and wasteful corporate welfare tell a different story. It’s as if deficits only matter when lawmakers try to give Americans back some of their hard-earned money.
As much as they wring their hands over exploding deficits and debt-saddled grandchildren, these newly minted deficit hawks aren’t fooling anybody.
Nathan Nascimento is executive vice president of Freedom Partners.
