Is Jennifer Rubin correct that Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan will “clip the wings of the Freedom Caucus”? In some ways, it appears unavoidable.
Trump wants to immediately do away with the Defense sequester, which the American Enterprise Institute estimates will allow him to spend about $300 billion extra over the next four years. The Wall Street Journal thinks that Trump’s proposed tax cuts will result in “$6 trillion in lost revenue over the next decade.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget looked at Trump’s proposals in the Spring and came up with this handy chart:
Now, you might wonder how you can increase the debt by 12 trillion in ten years without raising the borrowing limit of the U.S. government. Sure, you can sprinkle some magic fairy dust around that will assume economic growth will exceed 10% annually, but that seems rather extreme even for committed supply-siders. Will the Freedom Caucus laugh in Trump’s face, as Paul Ryan did in September, when asked to pass his $550 billion unpaid-for infrastructure bill?
You might think that these folks will simply adjust to their new situation and go along to get along. And many of them will do just that. But they won’t be able to avoid breaking pledges or casting votes to raise the debt ceiling every five minutes.
And, that, in a sense, is having their wings clipped.
Now, when it comes time to vote on huge budget busting bills, it may be that the Democrats will be there ready to lend a hand. But they’ll have conditions, and those conditions will grow more demanding to the exact degree that the Freedom Caucus refuses to supply the votes themselves. In other words, the more intransigent they are on blowing up the debt and deficit, the more power the Democrats get to shape legislation.
Will they learn their lesson from this?
If they do, it will be something new because they continually forced Boehner into the arms of Pelosi over the last six years until it frustrated them so badly that they essentially forced Boehner’s resignation.
It’s a no win situation for the Freedom Caucus because Trump will go around them if he needs to. But they could still cannibalize their own leadership. At least, for now, they seem content with Paul Ryan as their speaker, but there could come a day that Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon (an avowed enemy of Ryan) asks them to defenestrate him. Or they could decide to do it wholly on their own as a way to push back against the White House’s big spending and reliance on Democrats.
There isn’t really a coherent strategy for them going forward, though. They can demand a total root-and-branch repeal of ObamaCare but that’s probably not going to be possible on the terms they desire. But mostly, they’ll find themselves being whipped to vote for things that aren’t even remotely paid for, which will require them to up the debt ceiling repeatedly.
And if they refuse, the Democrats can hold the administration hostage in a fair bit of turnabout.
What makes you think Democrats are capable of holding the debt cieling hostage or that Debt King Trump will care about breaching it?
Magical thinking?
Wouldn’t it be ironic if Trump ends up activating the trillion-dollar coin?
He might have to.
There is also a potential problem here with inflation that a trillion dollar coin can’t fix. By some accounts we are already around full capacity and full employment. So any further spending or tax cuts will light up inflation.
If that were true, we would be preparing for president Clinton’s inauguration.
Perception has something to do with it.
Trump made a lot,of noise at the end of the campaigne about illegal immigration, Islamaphobia and let’s not,forget those emails, croked Hillary and Comey. She actually won the popular vote
On the coasts.
That’s where the people are, which in a genuinely democratic system would be all that matters.
As it so happens there was a WSJ story about concern about inflation and…. it was meaningless.
Consumer Price index not counting food/fuel is flat for all of 2016 at 2.3.
CPI including food/fuel is sub 2.0
Personal consumption expenditures have been at 1.0 all year until october(no data for October).
Wages are about flat.
Currently the threat of over inflation is non existent.
Rent up 6%, Medical up what? 10% or 20%?
As long as you live on the street and don’t get sick, inflation is fine I guess. After all, BMW didn’t raise prices, did they?
Aren’t the wealthy, and particularly the super-wealthy, powerfully united in the battle against inflation at any cost?
I don’t think that’s considered inflation. It’s just rising prices.
That’s right but the way the fed measures it we are at or approaching full employment. So a stimulus from here and reduced taxes can be expected to trigger inflation, perhaps not immediately, but on the way as competition for labor rises. A little inflation could,actually be good.
they’re in the minority. It’s not their job to provide the votes for must-pass bills.
It’s their job to ensure that the country not turn into a smoking crater. If they think that means voting to raise the debt ceiling, while getting nothing in return, they’ll do it.
And THAT is the conundrum.
Democrats still have to do the right thing. Still follow the norms. Still, as well as they can, represent their constituents.
And it would not benefit their constituents, who theoretically are the weakest among us, to allow the economy to explode.
.
The debt ceiling is imaginary. The money was already appropriated to be spent. A debt ceiling is a foolish mechanism. So it is purely political. . I suppose the dems being a minority can just sit back and watch them spin. That would be nice to see actually.
I don’t understand what ‘imaginary’ means in this context. We all agree that defaulting on our debt would have serious non-imaginary repercussions, right?
Right. But,some,seem,to think there is some real need to monitor the debt level and then stop spending at some made up level that is,already baked,in by approved spending.
Also, this is OT, but I’d be fascinated to read your re-evaluation of the Obama years (encompassing both the administration and leftie activism) from a post-election perspective. If you think a re-evaluation of strategies and priorities, etc., is in order.
But you castigated the republicans for the samne thing and said it was their job.
IOKIYAD?
They were in the majority then, too. Try to follow along.
I must admit it would be nice for the shoe to be on another foot. Fun and games.
If is doing an unbelievable amount of work in this post.
If the pilgrims had shot a skunk instead of a turkey, thanksgiving would be a different holiday.
.
Yes, and rain is wet.
Probably, but rain is always wet.
One concern I have is how the Democrats will play the debt issue. If they support major debt-financed policies under Trump, they will be normalizing a situation where Republicans (such as Reagan, Bush, and now Trump) get the political benefits of expansionary policy, and when the bill inevitably comes due Democrats — if they can get the White House back in the first place — suffer the burdens of the contractionary policy Republican legislators force on them. This is a political mug’s game. While I understad Democrats want to do the right thing by the country, as they see it, they are on the edge of creating a situation that will continually subsidize Republican bad faith, to their own permanent disadvantage. Democrats should think very carefully about supporting expansionary policy under Trump, whatever hypocrisies Republicans are willing to commit.
Yes, this hits the nail on the head–Repubs adopt tax cuts and deficit spending to goose the economy and then the hapless Dems get left holding the bag and attempting to reestablish some sort of fiscal sense. Rinse and repeat.
The Tea Party was a plutocrat-funded astro-turf operation put in place in 2009 to try to hold off upper class tax increases and also to punish a Dem prez from responding to a (plutocrat-generated) financial calamity. So the focus of the resulting Freedum caucus was solely to harry and harass a Dem prez, first and foremost. Now that that Dem prez has been completely stymied and (some version) of a Repub now holds the WH, the Repub Congress won’t have any problem raising debt ceilings and enacting more budget-busting tax cuts. They aren’t going to make life difficult for a Repub prez, duh.
Dems need to try to find some way to explain that phony American “conservatism” only cares about fiscal probity when there is a DEM prez to harass and ruin. Give Repubs a Repub prez and anything goes fiscally. Dems also need to point out (time after time) that Repubs only oppose deficit spending and infrastructure spending when there is a Dem in the WH—that Repubs do not take policy positions good faith and that for them it’s always party over country.
Finally, Dems need to avoid aiding the upcoming Repub program–at the very least abstaining as block on any future votes to increase the debt ceiling, thus making the Repubs alone vote for it, and having the Repub prez take the heat if the ceiling isn’t raised. If Dems use their votes to pass a debt increase that would fail without them, they are fools. The Repubs are the gub’mint now.
It also shouldn’t be hard to vote against Der Trumper’s proposed infrastructure “program”, as it looks to be bullshit tax cuts and privatization schemes to benefit Repub donors and plutocrats.
There is definitely a trap waiting for the dems if,they support both tax cuts and infrastrucure spending. It won’t be long before someone says we have to pay for it. Now enter Ryan with a plan to cut all the safety net programs —SSMM. But fail to support it and be accused of standing against jobs and that’s after they slice and dice Obamacare. Gonna be a long eight years.
I don’t see why they can’t both oppose tax cuts for multi-millionaires that cost trillions while trying to steer spending to more people who can benefit.
Democrats need to advocate spending that helps more people, more equitably, not spending on people who are already wealthy.
The Freedom Caucus have never been anything but a bunch of really stupid people obsessed with magical thinking and worried about being primaried. As for the Democrats, it would be nice to think they’ve learned how to play hardball from watching the GOP but frankly I doubt they have. And it’s up to those of us in the blue states to lean hard on our Congress Critters because otherwise the country really goes down with a crash. Needless to say, even at the height of China’s fastest economic growth rate they never achieved 10% per year never mind for multiple years.
OT I just saw where Romney is being considered for SOS. You really can’t make this up.
All they need is a resolution saying the Defense department is exempt from the debt calculations.
Yup.
The music is paid for when the poor boys dance.
To clarify: The Dems will still be against deficit spending in this normalized recessionary economy of low growth (2% GDP probably), flatlined consumer demand, and unemployment hovering at just under 10% real and a severely skewed distribution nationally??????
Moar austerity and beating will continue until morale improves? Read some NEW economists, please.
In what world are Democrats against deficit spending? Go back to the last time the Democrats controlled the House and tell me if the Democrats embraced austerity. It didn’t happen. The argument is that they didn’t spend enough for a faster and stronger recovery but that’s still not any economist’s definition of austerity.
What you’re referring to as “being against deficit spending” is Democrats going along with the priorities of a Republican-controlled House.
In any case Trump will certainly drop the austerity nonsense. He’s going to increase military spending. The sequester will be gone.
“He’s going to increase military spending. “
I think Todd Harrison, quoted in my comment below, directly addresses this point.
I was really aiming at what some might consider good deficit spending and not so good deficit spending.
It’s true that Congressional Republicans have their own priorities. Still, Trump wants to do stuff and won’t want to be restricted by a budget set by people he generally dislikes. He’s managed to roll everyone else so let’s see how this plays out.
We don’t call it deficit spending, we call it stimulus. Ever heard a Dem leader embrace a deficit by name?
So, what? We can play with words next time Democrats control the House. It doesn’t change the fact that you are wrong about how Democrats approached spending when they actually controlled the purse strings.
This is how they operated. By choice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_Pay-as-You-Go_Act
Thought this was an interesting comment from Todd Harrison, Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the top national security and defense think tanks. Founded in 1962 at Georgetown University. VERY DC establishment.Harrison is Director, Defense Budget Analysis, Director, Aerospace Security Project and Senior Fellow, International Security Program.
This was his initial reaction to the election of Donald Trump:
“One thing we should all remember when it comes to the defense budget under a new administration is that the president requests a budget but only Congress can appropriate funding. So the direction of the defense budget depends to a great extent on the makeup of Congress and how well the president is able to work with Congress to reach a budget deal.
[With Trump’s win] and Republicans hold[ing] smaller majorities in the House and Senate, I would not assume this means traditional single party control of government. Many Republicans did not support Trump, and there are significant policy difference within the Republican Party, especially when it comes to foreign policy and trade. Democrats will still have enough votes to block significant legislation in the Senate, and that is an important power. I think this outcome likely means continued or even worse gridlock and could actually make it harder to reach a budget deal, especially if Trump governs as he campaigned.”
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/early-reactions-to-trumps-victory-roll-in-from-national-security-e
xperts/article/2606942
What do y’all think?
I think it will be easier to get a budget through because the Senate Republicans won’t be preventing anything good from getting done, but I think the 3-way split in the House is still going to make things difficult.
I suspect this is wishful thinking.
We keep hoping a GOP internal war will bail us out.
Alas these hopes have been unrealized for over a year.
Some people were talking about the end of the republican party, but the first time the Democrats vote to raise the debt ceiling to pay for corporate tax cuts and military spending, that will be the end of the democratic party.