Republicans slip into a 'predictable spiral' - By Dana Milbank

[DonViejo]

By Dana Milbank

Hurricane Harvey has devastated Texas. Now board your windows, evacuate the low ground and watch the damage it is poised to unleash on the nation’s finances.

Harvey makes landfall in Washington as soon as next week, when President Trump is expected to ask for what could be tens of billions of dollars in storm relief. And paying for storm recovery — probably with few offsetting spending cuts — will be but the first blow to fiscal discipline in what looks to be a particularly active, and calamitous, spending season.

After Harvey comes the debt ceiling, and there are rumblings that the vote to raise the limit could actually be used to increase spending. (In the past, such votes were used by fiscal hawks to cut spending.) At the same time come negotiations to fund the government for fiscal year 2018, and indications are that lawmakers will try to avoid a shutdown with a short-term spending deal that will include a Pentagon slush fund worth tens of billions of dollars.

Then, still forming over the Treasury Department is a fiscal Category 4: Trump and Republicans have given clear signs they are moving away from tax reform (a simplification of the tax code that doesn’t necessarily reduce revenue) toward all-out tax cuts, financed by deficit spending.

Trump, who came to power promising to eliminate the $20 trillion debt, or at least to cut it in half, is poised to oversee an exponential increase in that debt. Republicans, who came to power with demands that Washington tackle the debt problem, could wind up doing at least as much damage to the nation’s finances as the Democrats did.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/republicans-slip-into-a-predictable-spiral/2017/08/30/5ae52a22-8dcf-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html

[PSPS]

1. "as the Democrats did?"

[catbyte]

2. WTF does THIS mean?!?

"Republicans, who came to power with demands that Washington tackle the debt problem, could wind up doing at least as much damage to the nation’s finances as the Democrats did."

No explanation, just more GOP bullshit. Fuck off, Millbank.

[DK504]

3. "doing at least as much damage to the nations finances as the Democrats did. "

Are you kidding me?

President Obama cut debt in half. He put the illegal war debt on the books and we watched the Rethugs loose their minds as their treachery came to light.

President Obama was stopped the night of his inauguration by the disgusting vermin opposing anything that came out of his mouth. The damage Democrats did????? Where is that coming from?

[shanny]

4. Milbank just can't help himself, can he?

that is what is predictable: both sides! both sides!

[Skittles]

5. Democrats had to save the country when repukes crashed the economy

that's hardly the same as when Dubya came into office handing out bribe money