By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | Both of our American political parties are big spenders
Let’s be clear. There is only one thing that both parties agree on: spending money we do not have. The main difference is that the Republicans are currently irresponsible, but deny it, pointing to the Democrats and saying they are worse.
I’m a social liberal, but I want a balanced budget. Decades ago, I easily fit into the Grand Old Party, evaluating public expenditures based on costs versus benefits. The old GOP cared about waste, but also about addressing the needs of our citizens. No more.
For decades, the GOP has ignored fiscal responsibility, advocating tax cuts (especially for corporations and the wealthy) while constantly urging more military spending. These Republicans worried little about the deficit their policies created.
We all know by now that former President Trump’ was no fiscal conservative, slashing taxes but not programs. His record from 2017-2020 proves that he was a big spender. That is not my opinion; it is fact. Check the deficit, which went from $665 billion in 2017, to $3.7 trillion in 2020. That’s an increase of 556 percent in just the four Trump years! GOP apologists must accept responsibility for this fiscal irresponsibility and not just say “but look at the Democrats.”
Often, the primary group pushing the GOP was the military-industrial complex, that is, big corporations wanting cost plus contracts, corporate welfare, regardless of the lack of need for more tanks, more planes and so on. It’s a little late for the Republican House to suddenly advocate for the concept of fiscal responsibility with the Democrats in the White House.
On the other hand, the Democrats have traditionally been the big spending party. Democrats have been for big ticket things like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. But they have not raised the revenues needed to pay for these and other programs.
President Joe Biden pushed through his massive $1.9 trillion COVID relief package with no GOP support. It addressed needs (such as targeted help for businesses hurt by the pandemic), but also had some questionable areas (like sending $2,800 checks to couples making $149,000 annually). There were few revenue raising measures included in the package.
There’s no question that our nation’s infrastructure is collapsing. Both parties agree on that much. Biden initially proposed an infrastructure bill. But the bill also had funding for education, environmental issues, childcare and a wide range of other items. Even the bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), compromise bill ended up with a $1.2 trillion price tag.
This bill was weak on the payment end, failing to raise corporate taxes or taxes on the wealthy. Instead, it proposed better tax collection by the Internal Revenue Service, a convenient ploy to avoid making key lobbies angry. Plus, it repurposed Covid money and issued bonds. Even then, the Congressional Budget Office believes that the deficit will go up $256 billion over 10 years.
There is plenty of blame on budgets to go around. Our national budget has not been balanced since Bill Clinton was in office. The only way that we will have fiscal responsibility is for both parties to construct a bipartisan budget proposal, which would both raise revenues (taxes) and cut expenditures (programs). Pointing fingers is not the answer.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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