Remember when Sen. Mitch McConnell declared the deficit a “huge, huge problem,” and “the most important issue confronting the future of our country?” That was so Barack Obama presidency ago! On Fox News, McConnell touted the Trump tax cuts as a selling point in the 2018 midterm elections and seemed not to have a care in the world about deficits.
During his visit to Your World on Tuesday, McConnell promoted the Trump/GOP tax cuts passed in December. He crowed, “Eighty to ninety percent of the American people get tax relief out of this bill.”
McConnell shrugged off House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's criticism that the bill only provides “crumbs” for most people. “They want to take this to the American people and we’re happy to do that,” he sneered, “to see whether the American people think it’s a good idea for us to let them keep more of their hard-earned money rather than sending it to us.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked if the tax plan could be “just undone” if Democrats take control of Congress in November.
“Not as long as President Trump is in the White House,” McConnell said. But he agreed that Pelosi and the Democrats “would undo it if they could.”
“It’s a tough sell,” Cavuto said about the tax cuts, noting that “it’s still not polling well.”
McConnell disagreed. “It’s a pretty good argument to make that we allow you to keep more of your hard-earned money than sending it to Washington,” he insisted.
FACT CHECK: As the Chicago Tribune noted, the Congressional Budget Office determined that the Trump tax cuts will raise the deficit by $1.8 trillion over the next decade even after its positive effects on the economy are factored in.
But nobody even mentioned the deficit.
Watch McConnell's changed tune on deficits below, from the April 17, 2018 Your World.
1. Tax cuts pay for themselves by increasing tax revenues. Thus, if you reduce the tax rate to zero, tax revenues will pour into the Treasury.
2. Deficits don’t matter. Unless and until some black Kenyan Muslim sneaks into the White House. Then deficits really matter and all non-Defense spending must be slashed.
“Not as long as President Trump is in the White House,” McConnell said.
And that, of course, will be weeks, a couple of months at most.
The real benefits of this Tax Transfer are for the extremely wealthy and for the mega-corporations who have already been shown to pay very little in taxes in any case.
But that deficit issue is going to be interesting after the midterms – if the GOP maintains their majority in both houses, they will use that issue as a path toward making their long-sought cuts in Social Security and Medicare. All they have to do is invoke the Pay As You Go provision, and the deficit will automatically require those cuts.
Even if the Dems somehow get majorities in both houses, and even if they then were able to pass a correction to the Tax Transfer, it would absolutely be vetoed by the Pence White House in short order. McConnell is correct to note that – although he doesn’t seem to be as smug these days as he was when he stole a Supreme Court seat and then ran around the Senate floor giving his friends high-fives.
