Democrats Should Stop Acting As If Republicans Ever Cared About The Deficit
They just want to hurt people.
Republicans have passed a budget that kicks poor people in the teeth. It’s cruel, almost psychopathic legislation, and the fact that it’ll explode the deficit is beside the point. Yet, that’s the point that Democrats think will help them regain the House.
The Democratic Party’s Facebook page posted a video with the caption, “These Republican hypocrites just voted to increase the deficit by $3.25 trillion.” The video showed congressional Republicans insisting they’d never vote for a bill that would increase the budget. Democrats overestimate how much voters care about the GOP’s blatant hypocrisy. If someone said they’d never buy you ice cream, but then they bought you ice cream, you wouldn’t call them a hypocrite. You’d just say “yummy.” Republicans are out there telling voters their terrible bill is free ice cream.
During an interview on MSNBC, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Republicans are complete phonies when it comes to be claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility. All they have done is explode the debt and the deficit. Why? In order to provide massive tax cuts for the wealthy.” (Watch below.)
There are a couple issues here. One is that the average voter really doesn’t care that much if rich people receive tax cuts, especially if Republicans claim they’re also cutting their taxes. Fair or not, taxes are seen as something the government takes from hard-working Americans, and social programs are something the government “hands out” to less-than-hard-working Americans. Jeffries’s rhetoric doesn’t address the propaganda.
There is a Friends episode where Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) receives her first paycheck and exclaims with annoyance, “Who’s FICA. Why is he getting all my money?” (Watch below.)
FICA funds both Social Security and Medicare. However, the joke in 1994 was “what are all these stupid taxes?” Rachel worked as a waitress at a New York coffee shop, likely without benefits. Studies show that a 20something worker has a one in four chance of developing a disability. FICA is why a disabled Rachel would’ve had access to health care services.
Of course, in reality, Rachel would barely have been able to survive in New York on a waitress salary, even if Central Perk customers actually paid for their drinks. She would’ve needed public assistance, much like so many Walmart and McDonald’s employees.
Jeffries is correct that Republicans have exploded the debt and the deficit, but voters care more about the price of eggs than the national debt. Democrats have clearly absorbed right-wing talking points whenever they suggest that Republicans ever, at any point, believed in “fiscal responsibility.”
Fiscal responsibility gained prominence during the 1990s when lawmakers started prioritizing “balanced budgets.” Of course, this was during the Clinton administration, when Republicans were eager to block any progressive initiatives once Democrats regained the White House after 12 years. However, the budget deficit ballooned under Ronald Reagan (from $70 billion to $152 billion) and George H.W. Bush (ending up at $255 billion). Bill Clinton not only took the deficit down to zero, he ended his presidency with a $128.2 billion surplus. Then George W. Bush promptly frittered away the surplus on tax breaks for the wealthy (a reverse Robin Hood policy) and left office with federal deficit of roughly $1.41 trillion. Note that Bush had a Republican Congress for all but the last two years of his presidency. Barack Obama managed to reduce that deficit by more than half while also expanding health care access to millions of Americans.
Sure, Jeffries is right when he says that Republicans are “complete phonies” about fiscal responsibility, but at this point, that’s like saying Ronald McDonald is a phony about clean eating. If you ever believed this, you’re a chump.
Republicans from Reagan to Trump have given tax breaks to the wealthy and ramped up military spending. That’s their jam. They cut social programs because they enjoy it, not because they’re “fiscally responsible.”
Back in 1964, Reagan attacked social programs as an example of Americans trading freedom for “security.” He dismissed urban renewal efforts as an “assault on freedom.” Republicans have spent the past six decades convincing the impoverished that the government only offers material improvements to their lives as a prelude for enslavement. “Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory,” Reagan said in his “A Time For Choosing” speech.
A furious Sen. Jon Ossoff said, “I don’t want to hear ever again another Republican member of Congress talk about debts and deficit, because the cowards in the Freedom Caucus when they got offered a Big Mac on Air Force One folded.”
However, “folding” suggests that the House Freedom Caucus had actual principles that it surrendered to Trump. The caucus formed in 2015 and has opposed most spending for entitlement and social programs. They never really cared about “debts and deficits.” They just wanted to make life miserable for struggling people.
A friend once told me that she’d spent most of her life believing her father was overly frugal. That’s why she had to sleep with a hot water bottle during the frigid midwest winter or why they never ate out (even McDonald’s) or how she never had a new clothes for school. It was only years later that she finally accepted he was just an asshole.
Her father didn’t actually believe “my kids might have lousy Christmases and never take vacations now but this is all my misguided attempt to make sure they can afford college, maybe buy a nice house, and be prepared for a medical emergency.” No, he just liked making his family beg for basic things (like heat on Christmas Eve) and then denying them. He sucked.
Republicans don’t want to defund social programs and block health care access because they give a damn about the deficit. They fundamentally don’t want the poor to thrive or enjoy even the briefest moment where they aren’t worried about survival. Some of it is a twisted sense of what inspires people to work harder but most of it is simply “they don’t deserve what we have.”
Democrats — and America overall — would benefit from stating this simple truth loudly and often. Republicans don’t care about you and to the extent they do, they want you to be miserable. We can easily produce receipts from legislation to right-wing Supreme Court decisions.
Too often Democrats behave as if they’re engaging with idealized West Wing Republicans, but that’s inconsistent with how non-fictional Republicans actually govern.
It’s not as if Democrats are unaware of how Republicans speak about them. They didn’t say, “Democrats are a bunch of hypocrites regarding their constitutional belief in the separation of church and state.” No, they shouted, “DEMOCRATS ARE WAGING A WAR ON CHRISTIANS!” Republicans accused Joe Biden of having an “anti-Christian” and “anti-God” political agenda.
The other day, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media, “California officials are failing to protect girls on the playing field and in the locker room. The Department of Justice has filed suit.” She’s persecuting vulnerable trans kids, but she claims she’s defending girls. If Democrats say Republicans are responsible for the future deaths of millions, that’s not spin. It’s the harsh truth.
A better message would be: "Republicans took your healthcare and all you got was a concentration camp in a Florida swamp."
Of course the whole “DEMOCRATS ARE WAGING A WAR ON CHRISTIANS!” thing was always pure bullshit, but maybe “REPUBLICANS ARE WAGING A WAR ON AMERICA(NS)!” will gain similar traction. Plus, it has the benefit of actually being true.