Republicans’ 4-Decade ‘Two Santa Claus’ Playbook May Finally Be Played Out
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Republicans’ 4-Decade ‘Two Santa Claus’ Playbook May Finally Be Played Out
President Biden has the authority to order the Treasury Dept. to continue paying our debts, regardless of what canards republicans trot out to their poorly informed base.
Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash
The current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a Democrat.
We know that means.
It means for the past two years, republicans have been screaming about the debt.
The debt they jack up indefatigably when their president is in office and then turn around and exploit when a democratic successor tries to clean up the mess.
It’s a feature of the GOP, not a bug.
It’s a scam called the “Two Santa Claus” theory.
It goes something like this:
When republicans are charge, they ram through as many tax cuts for corporations and the morbidly rich as they can, and pump unprecedented money into an already over-bloated military budget without any regard for the burden on the American people, so when a Democratic president is elected, those same profligate republicans turn around and scream about the national debt threatening to “burden our children and grandchildren” with all those “wasteful entitlements” (i.e. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP benefits, public education, unemployment insurance, infrastructure, and the minimum wage).
In so doing, they force Democrats to “shoot Santa Claus” — cut social safety nets, agree to tax cuts that benefit the rich, halt infrastructure spending, and undermine unions.
It has worked every time since Ronald Reagan embraced Jude Wanniski’s strategy four decades ago.
The first Democratic president after Reagan, Bill Clinton, fell for it.
Proclaiming an end “to welfare as we know it” and “the era of big government,” Clinton opened the door to embarrassing republican victories.
The next Democrat, Barack Obama, bought it too, proposing cuts to Social Security (the “chained CPI “).
Democrats currently hold the White House.
Guess what that means.
Right on cue, republicans are — once again — threatening to allow the government to default on its debts instead of agreeing to raise the unconstitutional debt ceiling.
It’s all part of their plan.
With help from conservative-leaning billionaire media conglomerates, the republican party has gotten really good at projecting the lie that Democrats are the “tax and spend party,” that “Democrats just want to raise your taxes.”
That’s some pretty slick rhetoric.
By “your,” they mean the economic royalists, not average American workers on whom republican policies have hollowed out the domestic manufacturing base and unions that created the middle class.
The truth about the national debt is even more astonishing when we consider that a quarter of the total amount — 230 years’ worth — got tacked on during four years of the Trump administration.
You know, the administration that boasted about “the greatest economy in the history of the world.”
Not even remotely true.
How did that happen?
Remember at the end of 2017, Donald Trump signed into law the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” a $1.5 trillion-dollar permanent tax cut to corporations and the wealthy.
Every republican supported it.
Where was the concern for “our children and grandchildren”?
What happened to “running the government like a household”?
Image credit: US Treasury via Daily Kos
Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren claims the whole “debt ceiling” controversy wouldn’t even exist if GOP economic policies, specifically the Trump tax cuts, didn’t.
She argues:
If the Republicans had not pushed just two things, the Republican tax cuts that went mostly to those at the very top and the biggest corporations and hollowing out the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] specifically so they could not hold wealthy tax cheats accountable, wouldn’t be able to audit them. If those two things had not happened, then we wouldn’t even hit the debt ceiling at any time during the first Biden administration.
This is a manufactured crisis. The real issue at stake here is, who’s going to pay to run this government? The Republicans are real clear on that: not the rich folks.
But it sounds like President Joe Biden is not prepared to make the mistake his recent predecessors made in capitulating to republicans’ ransom demands.
In response to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pronouncing, “We must finally address Washington’s irresponsible government spending if we want to put America on a better fiscal path,” Biden replied, “They [republicans] seem intent on being the party of chaos and catastrophe. I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip. In the United States of America, we pay our debts.”
The debt limit is a pre-arranged amount the federal government is authorized to spend on items Congress has already agreed to fund.
It is not a metaphorical “credit card,” as republicans are wont to repeat.
It’s not new spending.
It’s simply paying for the things we have already purchased. Right now that means trillions of dollars in tax breaks for people who didn’t need them and the bill has come due.
It was created with the World War I-era “Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917,” intended to obviate Congress’ need to vote each time a treasury bond needed to be approved, permitting the Treasury Department to issue bonds without having to clear Congress each time until the ceiling is reached.
78 times we reached it, we raised it.
Besides, section four of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment clearly states:
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
President Biden has the authority to order the Treasury Dept. to continue paying our debts, regardless of what canards republicans trot out to their poorly informed base.
He’s proven the past two years that Democrats are delivering for the American people.
The republicans’ legerdemain might finally be folding.