In Emine Yücel’s newly published piece about Republicans’ struggles to pass a slew of President Trump’s priorities ahead of the midterms, she digs in on a crucial point that isn’t getting much discussion.
Since Republican leadership doesn’t want to nuke the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE America Act, they’re doing a big performance for Trump to show that they’ll figure out a way to cram all of his needs — passing the voter suppression bill and funding for his war in Iran as well as the Department of Homeland Security — into another reconciliation package. Republicans are considering paying for the new spending for Trump’s latest fixations with more cuts to the social safety net, under the guise of rooting out rampant “fraud,” the admin’s favorite new word.
But in many cases, they won’t actually have to do that. The new spending is just a convenient excuse for more cuts.
You’ll remember last summer, congressional Republicans justified the devastating cuts they made to Medicaid and other social safety net programs by shrugging at the deficit, arguing they had to do that in order to offset the cost of extending most of Trump’s individual and corporate tax cuts permanently. This time is different: Many of their priorities on this go-round — chief among them the Iran War — won’t run afoul of the same Senate rule because the increased spending is not expected to linger beyond the 10 year budget window. Nonetheless, they are already making a big show of telling everyone that they are simply required to make cuts. A key excerpt from Emine’s piece:
Republicans have been largely obfuscating when they talk about the cuts to social safety net programs that they are once again planning. They point to the national deficit, saying they will have to offset the new spending with cuts in order to balance the budget out. They hand-wring over self-proclaimed “deficit hawks,” saying those lawmakers will not support a reconciliation package unless any added spending is not offset.
But the rules of reconciliation do not require them to offset the cost of any increased spending within the budget window, which is usually a 10 year period.
“If they put together a bill that, for example, gave money to the Department of Defense and funded ICE for some number of years, there’s no requirement that it needs to be offset,” Michael Linden, senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told TPM. “In fact, the reconciliation bill that they passed last year increased the deficit.”
