Republicans exist, in other words, to (a) cut taxes; and (b) prevent tax increases. It’s a shallow, destructive charade, but that probably won’t matter on Tuesday.
No, it probably won’t matter. People are going to vote for the exact opposite of what they want. They want balanced budgets, so they’re going to vote for a party that is promising to do away with the Paygo rules in favor of Cutgo rules. What does that mean? It means that the Republicans will be able to make tax cuts without paying for them. And that’s literally all it means. With Paygo, a tax cut is considered an expenditure no different from providing health care to a child. It has a cost, and that cost has to be paid for without borrowing more money. You can pay for it by shifting money from somewhere in the budget or through some kind of tax or fee. Sometimes, a new policy can pay for itself by creating savings to the government. But tax cuts do not create savings for the government. We learned that during both the Reagan and Bush the Younger administrations. If you want a balanced budget, the very last thing you should do is put the Republicans in charge. Their decision to gut the Paygo rules is just proof of this.
The theory the Republicans pretend to operate on is that tax cuts put more money in people’s pockets and allow business owners to make investments that create jobs. When enough new jobs are created, the government makes its money back with interest. It hasn’t turned out to be true, and no honest economist disputes this. But it does help the government balance the books when the economy is humming. The last time the budget was balanced was during the boom years of the late 1990’s. To get back to that type of economy, we need to create jobs, and the only way the government can directly create jobs is to spend hundreds of billions of dollars. The $700 billion stimulus plan created about three million jobs, or about five million less than we lost during the economic crisis. But, because the American people are about to elect a bunch of Tea Baggers, we’ll have no shot at the government creating any new jobs. Again, the people are voting for the opposite of what they want.
And if they want less partisan fighting and more results, lord are the ever voting for the opposite of what they want.
