1. We need to talk about the unspoken truth beneath the Republican Party's push to reform the U.S. tax code.
2. That unspoken truth ought to color deeply our understanding of the GOP, specifically that the party of limited government and fiscal conservatism is no such thing.
3. That truth is this: the Republican Party wants to add more than $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The number could swell to $2.2 trillion.
4. In fiscal year 2017, the deficit rose 3.5 percent to $668 billion. The national debt, meanwhile, is more than $20 trillion. (The debt is the accumulation of each fiscal year's deficit.)
5. I am overstating somewhat, but not about the price tag.
6. This truth has been spoken widely in press reports about the GOP plan, but not in the 36-point font headline it deserves.
7. It is folded into a narrative about the challenging, maybe impossible, politics of achieving tax reform. Those challenges are always pegged to the unreliable negotiating partner who is President Donald Trump.
8. This narrative is important, of course, as narratives are generally to our understanding of complex political dynamics.
9. This is a president who took office vowing to serve the little guy
10. – those left-behind coal miners and other hard-knuckled voters who failed to adjust to the ruinous competition brought on by globalization.
11. (Let's set aside for a moment that "the plight of the economically anxious" is a deeply flawed narrative.)
12. It is the press corps' responsibility to say whether the president kept his promise or perpetrated a massive political fraud.
13. There is no consensus yet, but one is building.
14. The Republican plan looks more like fraud than anything from the party of fiscal responsibility and limited government.
15. It appears to be a huge redistribution scheme to push wealth upward toward an elite few while forcing even those who would support a Republican agenda to pay for it with more and greater liabilities.
16. A new study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found the Senate plan gives nearly all millionaire households a tax cut.
17. For households making $30,000 to $100,000? Only about a third will see "tax relief." Furthermore, about 50 percent will see their taxes increase.
18. Congress's nonpartisan policy shop put it in starker terms. According to a Washington Post headline: washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…
19. But I digress. Back to the narrative.
20. While the Washington press corps tries to understand what's going on, it is – I'll venture to say – inadvertently failing to account for the complex dynamics
21. that led to a president who swore to watch out for the little guys and whose obsession with winning promises to betray them.
22. Let's try to remember the Democrats' and Republicans' differing reactions following the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
23. The Democrats, led by then-President Barack Obama, choose to use the government to counteract a trajectory toward economic depression.
24. The Republicans, led by then-House Minority Leader John Boehner, chose to combat the rising levels of debt that resulted from that choice.
25. Before 2010, the Democrats successfully enacted a gigantic stimulus package that, among other things prevented the crisis from worsening.
26. Everything changed after 2010.
27. The GOP took back the House, and from that point, the Dems could no longer use fiscal measures to counteract the effects of the Great Recession.
28. In addition to monetary measures, Obama asked the Congress to pay for a $447B bill to stabilize or create jobs, as well as invest in institutions and infrastructure.
29. But no matter what Obama did, he lost to the GOP's winning argument.
30. We can't spend more until we pay down our debts. As then-House Speaker Boehner famously said, "We're broke." politico.com/story/2011/02/…
31. The result of winning the argument is obvious.
32. As the recession wore on, Wall Street and the larger economy recovered, but much of the rust-belt working class continued to founder.
33. They had been losing ground for decades, of course, due to deindustrialization, but like a patient with compromised immunity, they were already weakened by the time the recession knocked them down for good.
34. And because "deficit reduction" was for Republicans the answer to every question, "entitlement reform" came to the fore even though entitlements like food stamps, Medicaid and Medicare were the very things the white working class relied on to get by.
35. To be sure, political parties are allowed to change positions, but to my knowledge no one in the Washington press corps – and correct me if I'm wrong –
36. has asked Republican leaders to explain why they were against deficits during the Obama years but for them now.
37. I would not expect a coherent answer, obviously, but the question should be posed, because political parties should be held accountable to the arguments they make, especially arguments that win.
38. We are indeed seeing stories about "deficit hawks" in scarce supply, as well as stories about fuzzy math. The New York Times ran an article over the weekend titled: nytimes.com/2017/11/17/us/…
39. But we need to see more.
40. If the Republicans are not forced to explain their change of heart, if they are revealed to be at least inconsistent in their political philosophy,
41. they would simply return to "deficit reduction" if they lose the House in 2018, a scenario that's increasingly likely. (h/t to @BruceBartlett)
42. The Democrats, furthermore, should make it clear they should not be made to clean up the GOP's fiscal mess.
43. Again.
44. Thanks for reading. Please argue and share. Especially on Thanksgiving. usnews.com/opinion/thomas…
