After instituting a .5 trillion tax cut and after signing off on a 5 billion Defense budget, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday, Tuesday, October 16, 2016; “The only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.” More McConnell: “It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem.” The deficit, grew 17 percent to 9 billion in fiscal year 2018. “It is a bipartisan problem and a problem of the 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 deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015. A new Treasury Department
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After instituting a $1.5 trillion tax cut and after signing off on a $675 billion Defense budget, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday, Tuesday, October 16, 2016;
“The only way to lower the record-high federal deficit would be to cut entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”
More McConnell: “It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem.” The deficit, grew 17 percent to $779 billion in fiscal year 2018. “It is a bipartisan problem and a problem of the 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 deficit has increased 77 percent since McConnell became majority leader in 2015.
A new Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018 which is a nearly 100 percent decrease from the previous year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.
Still, McConnell insisted the change had nothing to do with a lack of revenue due to the tax break or increased spending resulting from new programs since 2015. Instead he insists the deficit increase is due to entitlement and welfare programs. Now he does the old switcheroo from the yearly deficit to the national debt.
McConnell said, the debt is very “disturbing and is driven by the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. There has been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we’ll get serious about this.”
What McConnell does not tell you is 8 years out those tax decreases will go away for much of the population and many will see tax increases. McConnell and Republicans needed a way to keep the 60% of the total tax break going to the 1% of the Household Taxpayers making greater than $500,000 annually since this tax break was passed under Reconciliation rules (Democrats could not block it without 60 votes). Robert Reich has called this a Trojan Horse tax break.
Recently, Mitch McConnell has been considering his legacy. I think it would be adequate to paraphrase it as: “I saved the 2018 tax break for the 1 percenters. To hell with the rest of you.”