Heritage Foundation: Republicans are "bankrupting the country"

The Heritage Foundation, after touting the GOP tax plan, now says the GOP-led Congress is "bankrupting the country"

Published February 13, 2018 4:10PM (EST)

Paul Ryan   (Getty/Win McNamee)
Paul Ryan (Getty/Win McNamee)

The conservative Heritage Foundation accused the Republican-controlled Congress of "bankrupting the country and robbing future generations of Americans to pay for it."

In an op-ed for The Hill, The Heritage Foundation's Thomas Binion wrote that a "debt crisis, and all the terrible economic effects of that, are looming." While he went on to claim that "both parties are guilty," both chambers of Congress are controlled by Republicans and have been since 2015.

"The Bipartisan Budget Act is 652 pages long. The bill increases spending by $386 billion over two years and nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years. It also suspends the debt ceiling until after the next election."

President Donald Trump and the Republican party indeed unveiled a budget plan that knowingly increases the deficit, despite their phony concern for the deficit in recent decades. Except the Heritage Foundation is attempting to spin this on all of Congress, obscuring the role of the ruling party.

"Most Republicans are concerned about a real crisis of readiness in the U.S. military and are focused on getting the Pentagon the resources they need. After months of stalled spending negotiations, those Republicans are desperate and frustrated, and Democrats extracted a ransom," Binion wrote.

The reality is, the Republicans never actually cared about the deficit, and never have.

"Democrats didn’t even bother to make the case for any increase in domestic spending. They demonstrated not one single reason to increase domestic spending," he continued. "They don’t even have a private justification for the spending they wanted. They just named a price they thought they could get — and they got it."

But the deeply unpopular GOP tax plan, which was projected to increase budget deficits by roughly $1.5 trillion over the next decade, was fully supported and touted by the Heritage Foundation.

So now, the conservative think tank is only looking to sound the alarm on both the national debt and deficit by proposing that the federal government slash spending entirely. This is somewhat of a dream for House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who vowed to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security before the tax plan even reached President Donald Trump's desk.

If Republicans or conservative think groups are truly concerned about the deficit, why are there no measures to increase taxes on the nation's wealthiest, who pay next to nothing, if anything, in federal income tax? Why did the Bush administration launch two wars that have only expanded and have cost trillions of dollars? Instead, they'd rather pass austerity economic measures that include halting federal spending, and a tax plan that disproportionately favors the rich, while cutting programs for low-income and working-class Americans.


By Charlie May

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