In 1964 the United States’ national debt was $312 billion and Republican Barry Goldwater was not happy about it.
By 1980 the national debt had grown to $908 billion and Republican Ronald Reagan was not happy about it.
Three decades later, around 2010, a modern so-called ‘Tea Party’ movement took shape on the American Right that was mad as hell about a $13 trillion debt.
This week, just thirteen years later, the US has now amassed a $34 trillion debt. The largest in its history.
Despite Bill Clinton’s claims about balancing the budget once in the late 1990s, his Democratic Party has never been the one that preaches fiscal restraint and responsibility.
No, that falls on the Republican Party, which has claimed to stand for limited, constitutional government for over a half century and has contributed to this colossal problem as much as their rivals.
Goldwater was never president. Whatever Reagan’s successes and failures were, the fact is that spending exploded under his two terms. His successor George H.W. Bush was no better, and his son, George W. Bush looked at both his father and Uncle Ronnie and said ‘hold my beer.’
Obviously Congress ultimately holds the power of the purse, but White House’s make budgets and George W. Bush ended up being one of the biggest Republican spenders of all time.
Wars on terror that don’t make sense cost money. Along with other things.
Then Donald Trump came along and outspent Bush and Democrat Barack Obama combined. To his credit, Trump rarely pretended to be the small government advocate his Republican predecessors had.
He was going to send everyone in America COVID relief checks – with his name on it.
Now Democratic President Joe Biden outspends even Trump.
So if you have one party, the Democrats, who aren’t shy about big spending, and a Republican party that has historically advocated for less spending but has only done the opposite, how does this problem get solved?
The closest answer is something the Tea Party movement actually accomplished legislatively 13 years ago: The sequester.
Passed in 2011, the sequester was an across-the-board spending cut designed to force the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (“Supercommittee”) to agree on a broad deficit reduction package.
If the Supercommittee could not come up with voluntary reductions, the sequester automatically set into motion $109 billion of annual spending cuts.
This was supposed to take place from Fiscal Year 2013 (FY2013) through FY2021.
It forced Congress’s hand to cut spending. It was beautiful.
Until Republican leaders helped Democrats get rid of that too, when they compromised with Democrats to get rid of the sequester during the 2013 Obama budget battle.
The Daily Caller’s Chris Bedford did the play-by-play on that fiasco in late 2013 (emphasis my own):
Conservatives had better start paying attention to the budget battle raging in Washington: If things go south — and they are poised to do just that — the tea party’s single greatest policy victory, the sequester, could be destroyed. And worse yet, it could be destroyed in exchange for nothing.
The sequester isn’t popular with Republican defense hawks. President Barack Obama counted on that when he threw it out as an offer he believed the GOP would never take. But the president miscalculated the strength of tea party momentum, and he ended up signing into law the only year-to-year decrease in discretionary spending in modern U.S. history.
This week, Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and Democratic Sen. Patty Murray are leading their parties’ negotiations for a spending deal, without which the government will shut down on Jan. 15, 2014. Reports coming out of the secret meetings, however, indicate that the sides may agree to spending levels that are billions of dollars above the $967 billion-level mandated by the sequester law, potentially scuttling the tea party’s victory and surrendering the Republican’s advantage.
And surrender Republicans did. With then Republican Rep. Paul Ryan leading the pack.
Again, the sequester was a tangible victory that forced spending cuts at a time when much of the country was genuinely worried about a $13 trillion debt.
It’s almost three times that amount today.
The Tea Party political leaders of that time, figures like Sens. Rand Paul and Mike Lee, Rep. Thomas Massie and a few select others are still in office and judging by their actions haven’t changed their mind about the dangers of big spending.
Creating a political environment again where something like sequestration is possible might be the only way of turning things around. I can’t fathom anything other than complete default and the nightmares it could bring.
So we are left with a tiny fraction within a Republican party that is addicted to spending, rivaled by a Democratic party that unashamedly wants to spend even more.
How we get back to such a place is anyone’s guess, but in this moment, to paraphrase Princess Leia: ‘Help us liberty Republicans. You’re our only hope.’
Like this article? Check out the latest BASEDPolitics podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or below:
The post The national debt just reached a new record high and it is both parties’ fault appeared first on Based Politics.
Thank you for the good writeup It in fact was a amusement account it Look advanced to far added agreeable from you However how could we communicate