If You Have Spotted A Republican You Think Cares About the Deficit, You Are The Sucker

Paul Ryan (L): “”There’re these properties I’d like
for you to see.” What does it mean?
What you want it to mean.”

Reporter (R): “It means you want to cut the deficit to stop the national debt crisis. And we’ll take 12 units of Mountainview.”

Donald Trump’s populist economic policies are finally taking the Republican Party away from the Reagan paradigm:

The president wrapped his message in the populist rhetoric that powered his presidential campaign. But he described a plan that on its surface appears to offer relatively little to ordinary Americans, granting instead huge tax cuts — “the biggest ever,” he said — to corporations and their shareholders.

Mr. Trump gave few specifics on Wednesday beyond a goal of slashing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from 35 percent, and eliminating “loopholes and complexity that primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans and special interests,” a reference to his call to scrap some itemized deductions in the code.

A Republican offering a massive, debt-funded upper-class tax cut — who could have seen that coming? Not reporters at the nation’s leading newspaper, apparently:

In laying out what he called his principles for a tax overhaul, Mr. Trump made no mention of insisting that cuts be offset by corresponding increases to avoid adding to the deficit, essentially acknowledging publicly what his aides have privately for weeks: that he is willing to accept a plan that adds to the deficit, which had long been considered anathema to many conservative Republicans.

Yes, conservative Republicans have long been against tax cuts without offsetting spending cuts:

To be Scrupulously Fair, GREEN-EYESHADED DEFICIT HAWK Paul Ryan did not approve of Bush’s fiscal agenda — he thought the tax cuts and defense spending increases should have been larger. It’s amazing how long Republicans have been able to keep their “we care deeply about the deficit” shell game running.