Republicans Not Serious About Cutting Deficit

During the 2010 election campaign the Republicans made a big deal out of the federal deficit, and assured voters they would be serious budget-cutters and deficit watchdogs if returned to power.   They promised to cut the budget by at least $100 billion in the first year.  

Unfortunately, a large segment of the population believed that and voted for the Republicans to return to power (while another large segment was mad at everyone and just stayed home on election day).   The result was that the House of Representatives will now be controlled by the Republicans, and they picked up several seats in the Senate.

But the Republicans didn't even wait until the new Congress convened before they began to break their campaign promise.   In the lame duck session at the end of last year they forced Congress (by threatening to kill the tax cuts for 98% of Americans) to give massive tax cuts to the richest 2% of Americans.   This move immediately added $400 billion a year to the deficit -- four times the amount they had promised during the campaign to cut.   Even if they succeeded in cutting $100 billion from the budget, they will still have added $300 billion to the deficit.

That was only the beginning of their broken promises though.   The new Congress has only been in session for one day, and they are already talking about lowering their budget cutting estimates.   Instead of cutting the budget by $100 billion, they are now saying the cuts will only amount to $50-60 billion -- only about half of what they promised during the campaign.

But it doesn't end there.   On the first day of the new Congress the Republicans passed new rules.   These rules say that no new spending can be done without cutting the same amount of spending from elsewhere in the budget -- they're calling it "cut and spend".   On the surface that looks like they are serious about cutting the deficit (or at least not raising it).  

But when you look further into the new House rules you see that they exempted any further tax cuts from the "cut and spend" rule.   In other words they left themselves a big loophole to continue giving more money to the rich, thus raising the deficit even further.   Their ridiculous claim is that tax cuts don't raise the deficit.   Simple math shows that to be a lie.   If you cut the amount of money coming in without cutting an equal amount in spending, the deficit has to grow.

The point is that the Republicans were lying about deficit reduction.   They don't mind raising the deficit at all, as long as it is done with giveaways to the rich.   It's ordinary Americans (the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, etc.) that they will not raise the deficit to help -- the very Americans who need government help.   In fact, they are talking about cutting programs that help ordinary Americans.

The Republicans are not just shameless and heartless -- they are also liars.