We Called It: Republicans Add Billions to Deficit Then Call for Extreme Budget Cuts

After Republicans added billions to the deficit when they passed their unpaid-for tax bill in December, Politico reports that the House Freedom Caucus is pushing Speaker Ryan to cut spending levels dramatically, rather than stick with the budget agreement that Republicans agreed to:

“The House Freedom Caucus has another budget fight on its hands. Conservative lawmakers are already enraged over the 2017 budget levels and are preparing to push for drastically less spending than the levels first proposed by Republican leaders. And while the hardliners are looking to work with Speaker Paul Ryan to find a compromise, senior members of the Freedom Caucus say they could still buck leadership's current spending blueprint, particularly after the latest projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the deficit widening in the coming years.”

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Democrats predicted that this is exactly what Republicans would do – explode the deficit, and then use that to slash investments in our nation. Whip Hoyer said in his Floor remarks opposing the bill:

“The direct consequence will be providing Republicans with the ammunition they need to propose even deeper cuts to the very investments that help grow the economy and create jobs both in the short term and long term.”

Republicans didn’t care about fiscal responsibility when they added $680 billion to the deficit, but now they’re using this increase in the deficit to drastically cut spending for important priorities that give Americans the tools they need to get ahead in today’s new economy. This should come as a surprise to no one, and CQ points out the hypocrisy:

“Yet the same Republican lawmakers who criticized Obama's budget for not doing more to reduce deficits passed an omnibus spending and tax package in December (PL 114-113) that made the debt problem worse, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. That package included extensions of popular tax breaks that the CBO found will add hundreds of billions of dollars to the cumulative deficit in the next decade in the form of lost revenue. Republicans complained the CBO failed to account for the extra revenue tax cuts can generate by spurring dynamic economic growth, but CBO Director Keith Hall said in testimony that such growth would generate no more than $200 billion of extra revenue over 10 years, and maybe only half that amount. ‘It's not a huge effect,’ he said.”