Budget—and the credulous mouthpieces laundering Republicans' talking points

Why would the GOP shut down our government, grow our debt, and destroy vital services to increase Musk & Bros' staggering wealth?

Democrats have the policy and political advantage when it comes to the budget. Now they must break through the corporate- and billionaire-owned media framing of this reality (“Dems must save the Republicans from a shutdown”), and remind voters of three salient facts:

First and foremost, the responsibility for keeping the government open lies solely with the MAGA Republicans. They control the House, Senate, and White House—or at least Elon Musk does. President in Name Only (PINO) Trump and Congress have allowed Musk to commandeer the appropriations process in violation of our constitutional system. The House passed their bill; now the GOP Senate is left to clean up the mess.

Whatever inane framing outfits like Politico try to manufacture (e.g. adherence to the Constitution would somehow make a shutdown Dems’ fault, even as Republicans resist governance altogether?!), Democrats had no responsibility to bail out the MAGA House majority, especially without any guarantee Musk-Trump would abide by any deal.

Second, the debt and deficit cannot be laid at Democrats’ feet (which is not to propose it won’t be). Allan Sloan wrote at ProPublica:

The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy… Economists agree that we needed massive deficit spending during the COVID-19 crisis to ward off an economic cataclysm, but federal finances under Trump had become dire even before the pandemic.…

The combination of Trump’s 2017 tax cut and the lack of any serious spending restraint helped both the deficit and the debt soar. So, when the once-in-a-lifetime viral disaster slammed our country and we threw more than $3 trillion into COVID-19-related stimulus, there was no longer any margin for error.

Republican talking points often get laundered through credulous media mouthpieces. Ignoring Republicans’ track record on the debt, on Meet the Press Kristin Welker asked Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), “Democrats were in charge for four years” (evidently, she is unaware that the GOP took the House in 2022), then continued, “You were in Congress at the time. Why didn’t Democrats do more to cut government when they were in charge?”

Puh-leez. In the first two years of President Biden’s term, when Democrats had the House majority and the tiniest of margins in the Senate, we were in the midst of a pandemic and ensuing recession. (Both began under Donald Trump, whose gross mismanagement resulted in unnecessary pain and countless avoidable deaths.) No one was talking about cutting spending. In a recession, one spends—as Biden did—to fuel a recovery, which happened far sooner and more robustly than expected.

Moreover, Welker’s question assumes that spending is the problem. Biden rightly saw that the gargantuan MAGA tax cut for the super-rich had squandered $2T in revenue. Seeking to repeal that budget-buster once the economy restarted, he was repeatedly blocked by the GOP House (which nearly shut down the government and forced a default on the debt).

Republicans have been starving government of revenue for years, only to turn around and demand Democrats cut pro-growth investments and programs that support middle- and working-class Americans. The MAGA Republicans’ great idea is to enlarge the debt with yet another tax cut. I cannot overstate this: Democrats must put the blame and responsibility on Republicans—who, again, control both houses and the White House—for the consequent ocean of red ink.

Third, Democrats have repeatedly proposed budgets that would reduce the debt. However, since those budgets refused to perpetuate enormous tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich, Republicans never agreed. MAGA’s claim to fiscal responsibility is preposterous, and as phony as their supposed devotion to the Constitution.

Musk’s chainsaw massacre of the budget at the expense of nuclear security, pandemic protection, air traffic safety, and other programs that support the most vulnerable Americans has done next to nothing to improve…anything. He has found a grand total of less than $9B in savings (after deducting the drastic fake cuts and math errors) in a budget of nearly $4T. Even if taken at face value, as NPR underscores, “DOGE's moves so far to cancel contracts, end leases and push federal agencies to reduce their workforces barely make a dent in the government’s overall balance sheet.”

In short, the real question is: Why are Republicans shutting down our government and growing the debt to destroy vital services and increase Musk’s and his billionaire buds’ staggering wealth? It might be because the oligarchs care not one wit for the American people, lack any understanding of the essential functions that government performs, and look at the federal government as a giant opportunity for one more grift.

Just as Democrats successfully drew the line in the sand in 2017 to protect the Affordable Care Act, they now must mobilize the American people to reject this monstrous reallocation of wealth and fiscal insanity. Surely, Democrats can make the case that taking healthcare away from seniors in need of long-term care, children in need of food, and medical patients in need of treatment—all for the sake of feathering billionaires’ nests—is unconscionable.

The good news: Americans do not like Musk. They don’t like his grotesque cuts in vital services, his tax cuts for the rich, or much of anything about their scheme. The bad news: Musk-Trump do not care…and may go through with it anyway.