The big deficits in GOP tax plan arent a glitch theyre the whole point
By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/the-big-deficits-in-gop-tax-plan-arent-a-glitch-theyre-the-whole-point/
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It was a Gen-X senator, Marco Rubio, R-Florida, who revealed what Republicans are really up to here. Putting tax cuts on the national credit card isn’t a bug in their plan. It’s the feature. The flood of additional red ink cues them up for their real goal: hamstringing the retirement programs of Medicare and Social Security.
“You have to bring spending under control,” Rubio said this past week, when asked about the tax cuts adding to the debt. “The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare … That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.”
President Donald Trump echoed this when, at a rally in Missouri, he said that after cutting taxes, Congress would pivot next to “welfare reform.”
See how this works? Spending cuts are notoriously unpopular. So Republicans are instead slashing taxes, which people tend to like except that it obviously worsens the government’s fiscal position. But then the worsened fiscal position can become the rallying cry to slash spending — on health programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and also on Social Security.
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