Republican Wet Dream

Marco Rubio, perhaps best known for publicly debating penis size with future President of the United States of America Donald J. Trump, last week:

"The only way you are going to deal with the debt is you have to do two things. ... You have got to generate economic growth because growth generates revenue. But you also have to bring spending under control. And not discretionary spending. That isn’t the driver of our debt," Rubio said.

"The driver of our debt is the structure of Social Security and Medicare for future beneficiaries. We still have time, not just to save those programs, but to responsibly structure them in a way that doesn’t impact current retirees or people about to retire. But it would probably impact it for me and people younger than, in ways that quite frankly you wouldn’t really notice and you wouldn’t really object to because it’s reasonable."

Credit the Florida senator for speaking out-of-turn. Thus, Charlie Pierce observes 

Jesus, Marco, get with the program. You’re supposed to sell this Abomination of Desolation as a boon to “the middle class.” Then, when it blows up the deficit, you’re supposed to come sadly before the nation, blame the Democrats for not “compromising,” and mournfully tell millions of the elderly and disabled that it’s time for those lazy moochers to kick in.

Lacking patience, Senator Grassley has said "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” So, too, Orrin Hatch, who puts President Trump in the class of Saint Reagan, rationalizing why Congress can't afford $8 billion for the Children's Health Insurance Program over the next five years because "Unfortunately, the liberal philosophy has created millions of people that way, who believe everything they are or ever hope to be depend on the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them.”

Rubio- and maybe even Grassley and Hatch- realizes they can merely wait.  The Tax Policy Center explains that the congressional PAYGO rule requres "that (using current law as the baseline) tax cuts as well as increases in entitlement and other mandatory spending must be covered by tax increases or cuts in mandatory spending."  Probably worse yet: "It does not apply to discretionary spending (spending that is controlled through the appropriations process)."

Congress will not be able to reduce the Pentagon budget (commence laughing) to cover the roughly $1.3 trillion increase in the debt from the Corporate Tax Scam of 2017. So Medicare and Social Security will be automatically slashed, by $400 billion in the next ten years, according to Social Security Works.  Or as Bruce Bartlett calmly noted on "AM Joy"

And I believe that the minute the ink is dry on this tax cut, all of the fiscal responsibility groups and the Office of Management and Budget and the White House will all be saying "I'm shocked,shocked to discover that the national debt is rising very, very rapidly. We must do something about it" and it will all take the form of cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.





Or as he less calmly has tweeted, "every Republican senator is a whore. Some just took longer to get their price."




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