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Moynihan was right: The GOP tax giveaway will lead to safety net cuts

BY PAUL BLEDSOE, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 01/03/18 08:00 AM EST

When Congress passed a massive tax giveaway to the richest that will add at least $1 trillion to America’s debt late last year, GOP lawmakers were remarkably candid about the next step: cutting the safety net for hundreds of millions of Americans by going after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

As Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted recently when asked about the huge debt the tax bill creates, he said Republicans plan on “instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future” to pay for their tax cuts. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) agreed: “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit,” he said in December.

In the 1980s, as U.S. debt ballooned because of President Reagan’s tax cuts and defense spending increases. Moynihan maintained that piling up debt to unsustainable levels was part of a deliberate strategy by Republicans, providing them an excuse to then cut the social safety net.

The lesson for Republicans was clear: run up debt recklessly with tax cuts for the wealthy, but never attempt to pay for them. And Republicans haven’t since, becoming a party that votes only to tax cuts, never to increase them.

This pattern of GOP tax giveaways to the rich accruing massive debt, and then Democrats cutting the deficits, has continued ever since. President George W. Bush’s two deep tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 — mostly to the richest Americans — wiped out the Clinton surplus and brought large new debt.

Yet for all this history, no tax bill has been as reckless in terms of exacerbating U.S. economic inequality and growing the debt and as the one Republicans passed late last year. The bill vastly benefits America’s richest 1 percent, who already control 40 percent of all wealth, and actually raises taxes on many middle- and lower-income Americans. No wonder it is widely unpopular with the public. A recent Quinnipiac poll finds that only 29 percent of Americans support it.

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