CMR and the Deficit Scam

Dear Group,

McMorris Rodgers is a creature of Republican/Libertarian ideology. Mr. Trump is her “positive disruptor.” She is “excited” about the “momentum” of the slim Republican majority in passing a Tax Cut (80% of which benefits the rich), repealing pieces of the Affordable Care Act, and “opening up” the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. (See In Her Own Words) The only vote she cast in this 115th Congress (2017-2018) that ran counter to the Republican majority in the House was against gutting the Americans with Disabilities Act. That is the exception that proves the rule. (Read: The ADA, What HR620 says of our Rep and the Republican Party

After passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, McMorris Rodgers stated time and time again it would “put money in your pocket,” even though the vast majority of the money taken from the treasury by the Act went to corporations and the already wealthy. The Congressional Budget Office and most economists said the Act would balloon the federal deficit by more than a trillion dollars over ten years. 

Last Monday, the U.S. Treasury announced the federal deficit swelled 17% in the federal fiscal year (October 1, 2017, to September 30, 2018), driven by a sharp decline in corporate tax revenues (from the same corporations that are busy using their windfall to buy back their own stock).I suppose it should come as no surprise that Republicans quickly got out to inform the nation that the problem was “entitlements,” certainly not the tax cut. Oh, no. Couldn’t be that.

Listen to Mitch McConnell, quoted from The Hill:

“It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem,” McConnell told Bloomberg News. “It’s a bipartisan problem.”

McConnell said the true culprit behind the rising deficits was mandatory spending.

“The three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, that’s 70 percent of what we spend every year,” he said in a separate interview with Bloomberg TV. “There’s been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs.”

It is as if the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act never happened. A deficit is an imbalance of income and expenditures, and the Republican Party just passed a massive income giveaway 80 percent of which went to the rich. Did McConnell or McMorris Rodgers ever balance a household budget? Where is their acknowledgement of the income side? On Sunday, October 14, in the Spokesman McMorris Rodgers wrote how we must curtail spending. She is part of Republican Congressional leadership with McConnell. How long after the election (if she stays in office and in the majority) will it be before they both use the ballooning deficit as an excuse to attack Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?

The Republican Party lost all claim to fairness and fiscal responsibility with their Party-line passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Now they want us to forget what they did and nod approvingly as they use the deficit they’ve inflated as justification for dismantling the social programs that support the dignity of struggling Americans.

Apparently, trashing the Affordable Care Act wasn’t enough. If the voters leave McMorris Rodgers and her people in power after the midterms, watch what happens. It won’t be pretty.

Keep to the high ground,

Jerry