Democratic policy wonks care. But we learned in ACA that the effort to craft ideologically moderate, fiscally responsible policy brings huge political costs, and that we will get precisely the same GOP+pundit pushback as when we do a more popular bloated underfunded entitlement.
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You care. Wonks care. Your party does not. Base would not allow debt/deficit to be a priority. Would fight entitlement reforms. It’s gospel on Left that debt is a phony issue.
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Not just wonks! Clinton-era Dems accepted spending cuts in balanced budget agreements; Oabama-era Dems did same, and embraced much more stingy ACA to keep budget neutral. For better or worse, took tough votes in name of fiscal discipline ....
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And didn’t even bother proposing spending programs that would massively increase debt. (Except Recovery Act, which was one time recession-fighter and should have been bigger.) ... Meanwhile Bush- and Trump-era GOP run up huge deficits with tax cuts. ...
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Yet Dems get ZERO credit, as original tweet shows. So why bother now? (I’m putting aside policy merits of how to think about deficits, which is a whole other discussion.)
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Right, like we teach our kids: “Don’t do the right thing unless you get credit.”
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But here’s the thing. It’s actually bad policy. If you’re going to have high deficits anyway, much better for sake of spending on education, health care, infrastructure, aid to poor than tax cut. Probably a bigger payoff economically and surely more help for people who need it.
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(Generalizing, obviously— depends on specifics of programs, distribution of tax cuts, etc. But general point stands.)
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This is an unfair "both sides" statement that is unsupported by the empirical evidence of the past three decades.
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No, Ron, you are disingenuous. The Republicans gave a huge tax cut to mostly corps & rich, citing phony economic predictions. Now they want to cut Medicare, Snap, Medicaid & other safety net programs, hurt healthcare premiums, as they have “suddenly” discovered the deficit /1
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Ron "Both Sides" Fournier carrying water for the GOP.
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False. Democrats care a great deal. It's Republicans that don't care. They only care about the deficit & Debt when they can use it as a weapon against Democrats. Period. When in power, they EXPLODE the deficit & debt. Democrats always reduce the deficit. Always.
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Don’t do the neither party shit. Repubs rack up the debt. Dems come and try to put some semblance of normalcy on things. Stop this both sides crap.
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Complete and utter horseshit. The only party that has made an attempt to eliminate the debt, and came pretty close, is the Democrats.
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Cool story, bro.
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Cuz it doesn't matter that much
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Sure, Ron. Don’t worry. The Democrats will be back in power soon and, hopefully, clean up the Republican Party mess...again. Unless, Trump and party completely f*ck our country over. If so, it’s going to be some dark decades for all of us.
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Don’t worry your meaningless scolding will get taken seriously again once there is a Dem in the White House.
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Good to see you remaining consistent with your brand
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