Don't Blame This One on Trump

At least we got a tax cut

Look, I know some people are blaming Jeff Flake and other Republican moderates for being hypocrites because they say they oppose Trump and then vote for this monstrous Republican tax bill, but I think this is one it Trump is simply a generic Republican.  They all want a huge tax cut to reward their donors and starve the beast to force future spending cuts (especially to Medicaid/Medicare/ Social Security).  Grover Norquist famously said that his qualifications in a Republican President were a working set of digits to sign whatever legislation the Republican Congress could pass.  Well, anyone looking at Trump's tweets can see it meets that standard.  It would be the same with any other Republican President with a working set of digits.

The is the Republicans core central mission since Ronald Reagan, who said, "[I]f you've got a kid that's extravagant, you can lecture him all you want to about his extravagance. Or you can cut his allowance and achieve the same end much quicker."  Admittedly both Reagan and Bush, Senior flinched when they ran into a groundswell of opposition to cutting Social Security.  Bush Junior forgot about it altogether.  But under Obama, Republican donors and the politicians they owned convinced themselves that the only reason Bush, Junior's popularity fell was that he didn't seriously take an ax to the New Deal and resolved not to make the same mistake twice.  From the safety of controlling only the House (2011-2012), they kept voting not only to repeal Obamacare, but to privatize Medicare as well.  In the 2012 election, Democrats didn't run against their plans for a simple reason.  Focus groups revealed that no on believed it.  Ending Medicaid and phasing out Medicare to make room for a big tax cut for their donors was so extravagantly unpopular that no one believed a political party would commit suicide by doing it.  Donald Trump ran in 2016 specifically on a promise not to undermine Social Security or Medicare (despite favoring even bigger tax cuts than anyone else).

Well, now they are at it again, giving donors major tax breaks in order to get funding for their campaigns and starve the beast.  How do we know it?  Because Republicans have actually said so.  In the Senate, Lindsey Graham has warned that if the Republicans don't pass this, "the financial contributions will stop."  In the House, Chris Collins says. “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.”  Marco Rubio has openly come out in favor of using the resulting deficits as an excuse to cut Social Security and Medicare, as have others.

They would be doing the same thing if a Republican other than Trump were in office.  Suppose instead of Trump we had a President Marco Rubio.  What would be different?  Well, he wouldn't be distracting us with outrageous tweets.*  There would not be any need to investigate him for possible collusion with Russia.  Mike Flynn, Steve Bannon and Steve Miller would be obscure consultants.  So there would be some advantages.  His appointees would be just as committed to destroying their departments, but they would not be so nakedly offensive in their behavior as to do things like fly a private jet at taxpayer expense to see the eclipse.  We might very well be just as close to war with North Korea and/or Iran and closer to war with Russia, but in a more seemly manner.  The President would take an actual interest in the content of the tax bill and not just having a signing ceremony.  He would push for some pet projects and tell less blatant lies about it.  But the payoffs to donors and the starve the beast strategy would be exactly the same.

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*I don't mean by this that the tweets are a deliberate distraction ploy, just that they are having that practical effect.