Republicans always advocate for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the constitution when they are the minority party, always complaining about all that “liberal” spending in Washington, D.C. Yet, today Republicans run the White House and both branches of Congress, and it is crickets on any talk of a balanced budget.
Why?
The federal budget deficit has now swelled to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018, the Treasury Department said today. That’s the Trump treasury department.
The deficit is driven in large part by a sharp decline in corporate tax revenues after the Trump tax cuts took effect.
The deficit rose nearly 17 percent year over year, from $666 billion in 2017. It is now on pace to top $1 trillion a year before the next presidential election.
Administration officials attributed the deficit’s rise to greater federal spending, including the military and domestic budget increases that President Trump approved this year, not the $1.5 trillion tax cut.
But the numbers released by the Treasury Department suggest falling revenues were a far larger contributor to the rising deficit than higher spending.
Here’s what the conservative National Review says about it:
“Donald Trump is on track to be an even bigger spender than Barack Obama. Federal spending has increased by 7.5 percent, or almost $300 billion, over President Trump’s first couple of years in office. Conservatives might applaud the over 8 percent increase in defense spending, although that increase seems unrelated to any strategic plan or external threat. But what should Republicans make of the 7 percent increase in domestic spending?”
Many Republicans said during last year’s debate over tax policy that the proposed cuts would pay for themselves by producing faster economic growth and correspondingly higher federal revenues. But that hasn’t happened.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, the official tax scorekeeper of Congress, projected that the new tax law would reduce revenues by $1 trillion, even when accounting for additional growth.
There’s a good chance if Democrats win back the majority in the House next month, we’ll be hearing a lot more about a balanced budget amendment from Republicans.
Just remember what they did when they were in charge.