Let’s be frank, Republicans aren’t exactly known for being the brightest crayons in the ole Crayola box. To be even franker, they tend to be pretty damn dumb when they wanna be and have a serious tendency to shoot themselves in their own feet on the regular.
But this one might actually take the cake.
For what feels like forever at this point, one of the GOP’s biggest, favorite talking points (at least when it comes to economics in the US) has been this trickle-down-esque concept that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” To hear them tell it, Republicans want you to believe that massive tax cuts for the country’s 1 percent will actually benefit America’s average Joes in the long wrong, through the creation of new jobs and the stimulation of economic growth with the money that America’s wealthiest is saving on their taxes — which they claim ultimately makes up for the astounding decrease in tax revenue when the 1 percent isn’t made to pay their fair share of taxes like the rest of us.
It’s the very same argument that was hammered to absolute death when Republicans passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 under the Trump Administration.
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However, Washington Post opinion writer Catherine Rampell recently published a new column, in which she pointed out that even Republicans themselves know that their argument is garbage, at best. So much so, in fact, that according to Rampell, some House Republicans have unintentionally “admitted” that “tax cuts don’t pay for themselves.”
“The House rules package recently passed by the newly GOP-controlled House included some notable, occasionally troubling things,” Rampell writes in her column. “For example, one set of measures would kneecap congressional ethics probes. Another provision would make it harder to swiftly raise the debt ceiling. But also tucked into the rules package, and attracting somewhat less attention, was a change to how lawmakers treat changes to tax law.”
The columnist goes on to explain, “Specifically, they’ve rigged the system so that tax cuts will be much easier to pass, and tax rate increases harder to pass. On the other hand, investments in the poor and various other kinds of spending increases — on so-called mandatory programs, such as Medicare or food stamps — would be more challenging to get through.”
According to Rampell, Republicans in the House have found “ways to stack the deck against raising taxes.”
“Under the new rules package,” she writes, “the budgetary requirements are more one-sided — in favor of tax cuts. Going forward, tax cuts do not need to be offset with any sort of savings elsewhere in the budget. They can add trillions to the debt. No problem. But this is not true of spending programs. Spending program increases still have to be paid for.”
“Not only that, but the savings to offset expansions of mandatory programs have to come from cuts to other spending programs,” Rampell goes on to write. “They cannot be offset by tax revenue increases. In practical terms: An expansion of food stamps can’t be paid for by raising taxes on the rich — only by cutting, say, Medicaid or disability benefits. So basically, any attempt to provide more support for poor or middle-income people is likely to come from other programs that help those same group. A separate portion of the House’s rules package says that any increase in tax rates would require a three-fifths vote rather than a simple majority, as in years past.”
On Friday, January 13, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen penned a letter to newly-elected Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, clearly warning the GOP doofus that she expects the nation to reach its $31.4 borrowing limit on Thursday, January 19. Yellen did not mince her words when she noted that there is a “limited amount of time” and firmly called on Congress to “act in a timely matter.”
Rampell wraps up her column, arguing, “If you read between the lines, you’ll learn that even Republicans don’t believe their own longstanding promise that tax cuts will pay for themselves. After all, if the GOP genuinely believed this, they wouldn’t need to make it easier to pass tax cuts that don’t pay for themselves. Because such tax cuts would not exist.”
Read Rampell’s full piece with the Washington Post here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
