This Is the Long Game of Republican Economics (Atlantic)
Derek Thompson 7:00 AM ET
Here is a brief modern history of Republican attitudes toward the deficit. For eight years under an Obama presidency, Republicans foretold of a debt apocalypse and urged lawmakers to slash deficits by trillions of dollars. Under Trump, both GOP-controlled houses passed a corporate tax bill that economists predict will grow deficits by at least $1 trillion in the next decade. Then, within hours after the tax bill passing the Senate, Republicans stepped up efforts to cut welfare spending on low-income Americans because, in the words of Sen. Orrin Hatch, “we don’t have any money anymore.”
This flip-flop—or, more accurately, a flip-flop/flop-flip—might strike some as a trivial double-reversal, or just quotidian hypocrisy. But it’s a microcosm of the GOP economic agenda, which has made regressive deficit-busting tax cuts the centerpiece of the party’s national agenda while using fears of the deficit as a stalking horse to attack progressive spending.
This is the long game of Republican economics, and it is the opposite of a secret. In fact, it is a published document. For years, House Speaker Paul Ryan, with broad party support, has proposed budget blueprints that both cut corporate taxes, thus returning trillions of dollars in post-tax income to business owners and investors, and slashed government spending on health care and anti-poverty programs.
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Perhaps the Republican economic agenda does not appeal to the public because it was never meant to do so. Rather, it is exquisitely designed to mollify a class of corporate-libertarian donors, like the Koch brothers, who are members of a coordinated multi-decade effort to make tax cuts on the rich and the destruction of welfare programs their core agenda.
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It seems harsh to say that Republican politicians are mere servants to plutocracy. But when several members of the same organization independently claim the exact same motive, one is obligated to believe them.
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more: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-long-game-of-republican-economics/547721/
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