Unfortunately, that's the old Trump. The new Trump has the Republican Congress, so nimble it can turn on a dime and worry about the Federal deficit the day after it passes $1.5 trillion in tax cuts for the richest 1%.
"As the tax cut legislation passed by the Senate early Saturday hurtles toward final approval, Republicans are preparing to use the swelling deficits made worse by the package as a rationale to pursue their long-held vision: undoing the entitlements of the New Deal and Great Society, leaving government leaner and the safety net skimpier for millions of Americans.
Speaker Paul D. Ryan and other Republicans are beginning to express their big dreams publicly, vowing that next year they will move on to changes in Medicare and Social Security. President Trump told a Missouri rally last week, “We’re going to go into welfare reform.”
For weeks, Democrats and their allies have been accusing Republicans of a “two-step” deceit, warning that they would cut taxes now and then use the increase in the deficit they caused to demand entitlement cuts later. “When you run up the deficit, your next argument will be, ‘Gee, you’ve got a large deficit,’” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a former Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview.
Now Republicans are beginning to acknowledge as much. Mr. Ryan said at a town hall-style meeting last month that Congress had to spur growth and cut entitlements to reduce the national debt. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida was more specific on Wednesday, telling business leaders that the tax cuts were just the first step; the next is to reshape Social Security and Medicare for future retirees. But Democrats and their allies — and even some usual Republican allies — complain that Republicans are dishonest not to debate changes in spending and tax cuts at the same time, as the Simpson-Bowles commission did.
Sharon Parrott, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said Republicans understood how bad it would look to cut food benefits for poor families and health care for the elderly at the same time they were cutting taxes for corporations and the highest earners. “There’s a reason they separate them,” she said. “They think they can get away with it." But in an election year with high political engagement, she said, “I think it’s wrong to count out the idea that the public will figure it out."
— KATE ZERNIKE and ALAN RAPPEPORT, "Heading Toward Tax Victory, Republicans Eye Next Step: Cut Spending", New York Times, December 2, 2017
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"So it’s not at all surprising that they were willing to enact a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy even though all independent estimates said this would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt. And it was also predictable that they would return to deficit posturing as soon as the deed was done, citing the red ink they themselves produced as a reason to cut social spending.
Yet even the most cynical among us are startled both by how quickly the bait-and-switch is proceeding and by the contempt Republicans are showing for the public’s intelligence.
During the Senate debate over the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Senator Orrin Hatch was challenged over support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million U.S. children — but whose funding lapsed two months ago, and has not been renewed. Hatch declared his support for the program, but insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore” — just before voting for a trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent of the population.
The important thing to realize, however, is that the hypocrisy and contempt for the public we’ve seen in the past few days is just the beginning. But whatever words they use to cloak the reality of the situation, Republicans have given their donors what they wanted — and now they’re coming for your benefits.
— PAUL KRUGMAN, "Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits", New York Times, December 4, 2017
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