In a life filled with uncertainty, there are a few things you can always count on. First, that death comes for everyone. Second, that the current president of the United States will call an adult-film star he paid to keep quiet about an alleged affair “horseface” on social media. And third, that after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut they insisted would pay for itself and then some, Republicans would blame social services like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for exploding deficits and debt and insist that such “entitlements,” sadly, have got to go.
As a reminder, the Grand Old Party put on a big show of pretending to care about “fiscal responsibility” when Barack Obama was in office and mouth-watering tax cuts weren’t on the line. “Only one thing can save this country, and that’s to get a handle on this deficit-and-debt issue,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted after the 44th president won his second term. “The federal fiscal burden threatens the security, liberty, and independence of our nation,” the Republican Party platform warned in 2016. “You’re bankrupting our grandchildren!” was a common refrain, as were proclamations such as, “I won’t endorse a bill that adds one penny to the deficit!” Then Donald Trump won the election, and all those worries about crippling the next generation and the country going to hell in a handbasket vanished overnight—almost as though it was feigned in the first place!—with Republicans not only demanding that Congress pass a deficit-busting piece of legislation so that the president and his children could pay even fewer taxes than they already do, but maintaining—laws of math, physics, time and space be damned—that the bill once known as the “Cut Cut Cut Act” would actually help shrink the deficit.
But as the G.O.P. surely knew, that was never going to happen. Instead, as we learned this week, the U.S. budget deficit increased to $779 billion for the fiscal year, a 17 percent increase from the year prior, which is extra bad considering the economy is doing well, a scenario in which the federal deficit typically falls. Luckily, Mitch McConnell knows exactly who and what to blame:
“It’s disappointing, but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell said Tuesday in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt. “It’s a bipartisan problem: unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future.”
The “real” drivers of debt, according to McConnell, are “Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid,” “entitlements” from which the Senate majority leader would cut off the old and poor if only he could get Democrats to sign on. (That’s probably unlikely to happen, given Nancy Pelosi’s statement today that, “Like clockwork, Republicans in Congress are setting in motion their plan to destroy the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that seniors and families rely on, just months after they exploded the deficit by $2 trillion with their tax scam for the rich,” and Chuck Schumer’s that suggesting cuts to “middle-class programs like Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid as the only fiscally responsible solution to solve the debt problem is nothing short of gaslighting.”)
McConnell’s take on the situation echoes that of the White House, whose National Economic Council director, Larry Kudlow, said last month that he doesn’t “buy” the argument that tax cuts increase the deficit, and that the real problem is “principally spending too much.” (Kudlow, who has a penchant for never being right about anything, also claimed in June that the deficit was “coming down rapidly.”) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was even more blunt while telling his assessment to CNN last week, “People are going to want to say the deficit is because of the tax cuts. That’s not the real story.” (The report out of his own department suggests otherwise.) Incidentally, in June, reports circulated that the Trump administration was trying to figure out a workaround to cut another $100 billion from the tax bills of the wealthiest Americans, and in late September, House Republicans passed a piece of legislation that would add more than $600 billion to the debt over the next decade. Neither measure will come to fruition, but on the off-chance that one does, we’re sure McConnell stands ready to blame the poor and elderly freeloaders who clearly hate America.
If you would like to receive the Levin Report in your inbox daily, click here to subscribe.
Trump: Saudi Arabia being falsely accused of murder just like Brett Kavanaugh was falsely accused of sexual assault
“I think we have to find out what happened first,” the president told the Associated Press on Tuesday while commenting on the compelling body of evidence that points to Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. “Here we go again with, you know, you’re guilty until proven innocent. I don’t like that. We just went through that with Justice Kavanaugh and he was innocent all the way as far as I’m concerned.”
President of the United States now claiming Federal Reserve is the biggest threat to his presidency
Yes, you heard that correctly: Not the special prosecutor’s Russia investigation, or the trade war with China that’s hurting U.S. companies in states that voted for him, or impeachment, but the Federal Reserve, which is run by his hand-picked Fed chair:
Trump on Tuesday escalated his assault on the Federal Reserve, calling it “my biggest threat.”
“Because the Fed is raising rates too fast. And it’s independent, so I don’t speak to him,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business, referring to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. “But I’m not happy with what he’s doing because it’s going too fast. Because—you look at the last inflation numbers, they’re very low.”
Trump has been attacking Powell for several months now over the central banker’s decision to raise rates, which President Buy and Sell blamed last week for the two-day market decline. “The problem [causing the market drop] in my opinion is Treasury and the Fed,” he said at the time. “The Fed is going loco and there’s no reason for them to do it. I’m not happy about it.”
“Beautiful, clean coal” industry won’t be getting its bailout just yet
And after all Rick Perry’s hard work! Per Politico:
The White House directed Perry to “prepare immediate steps to stop the loss” of retiring coal and nuclear plants more than four months ago, and Trump even interrupted an Ohio fund-raiser in May to order an aide to call Perry to talk about the bailout. He also touted the national security benefits of coal a few months later at another West Virginia speech. . . . But the White House has shelved the plan amid opposition from the president’s own advisers on the National Security Council and National Economic Council, according to four people with knowledge of the discussions.
“The problem they’ve got is every option they might consider raises the costs for somebody at a time when nobody has an appetite for increased costs anywhere,” Bob Coward, co-leader of energy advisory firm MPR Associates, told Politico. “I think that’s the problem they keep running into. The political will to pay for it is not broadly there enough yet for them.” Still, the industry can’t be too mad at the president, who ditched the Paris climate accord last year and has pushing to just let coal plants to regulate themselves.
Elsewhere!
Uber Proposals Value Company at $120 Billion in a Possible I.P.O. (W.S.J.
Goldman, Morgan Stanley Show Wall Street Charging Ahead (W.S.J.
Robinhood Gets Almost Half Its Revenue in Controversial Bargain With High-Speed Traders (Bloomberg
Trump denies personal financial ties with Saudi Arabia (Politico
China May Have $5.8 Trillion in Hidden Debt with “Titanic” Risks (Bloomberg
You Need to Make More Than $713,706 to Be in New York City’s 1 Percent (Bloomberg
New Zealand dubs “drunk” wood pigeon the Bird of the Year (UPI
