Trumpcare And Budget Are Ready Made Ads For Democrats; Use Them Now

The Trump budget is an horrific proposal and there are plenty of experts who have spent the last day documenting the atrocities in it. As Stan Collender says, “This is not a budget. It’s a Trump campaign press release masquerading as a government document”. I’m sure we will be hearing that line about Trump proposals many times during his presidency. But, more than anything, this should become a campaign document for Democrats. This budget is never going to become law, although I’m sure some of its horrible ideas will eventually become part of whatever budget Republicans in Congress can come up with. But Democrats should pin every horrible proposal in this budget on Republicans starting now. Between Trumpcare and the Trump budget, Democrats can start building a narrative now that will pay off in the 2018 elections.

The real reason this budget is dead on arrival is the sequestration deal that both parties agreed to in 2010 as part of a debt ceiling deal that would force a budget deal that would reduce the deficit. Sequestration involved deep cuts to both defense and non-defense spending equally. Both sides hated sequestration – Republicans hated the cuts to defense and Democrats hated the cuts to non-defense spending. But that was the point. The idea was that both sides would come to a better agreement on a budget before sequestration kicked in. They didn’t, primarily because Republicans were happy to see federal spending cut even if meant a decrease in defense spending. In addition, the cuts in non-defense spending hurt Obama and slowed down the economic recovery from the Great Depression. So we are left with sequestration, which is the law of the land until 2021. And part of sequestration is that it creates budget caps and does not allow movement between defense and non-defense spending. In addition, any change to the caps or movement between defense and non-defense spending must be approved with 60 votes in the Senate. The Trump budget essentially keeps the total sequestration budget cap in place but moves funding from non-defense to defense, a violation of the sequestration law. The only way to get around that is with 60 votes in the Senate and there is no way any Democrat is going to sign on to a bill that guts as many domestic programs as this one. So this budget will never become law.

But that doesn’t mean that Democrats should not be exploiting this budget’s viciousness and heartlessness. Combined with Trumpcare, this budget reflects the Republican vision of our government. The ads simply write themselves. Republicans want to deny 24 million Americans health insurance and openly admit that “insurance really isn’t the goal” of Trumpcare. Republicans don’t believe that Meals on Wheels or Head Start or school lunch programs “are effective” and simply eliminate those programs. Tell coal miners in Kentucky and Pennsylvania that Republicans want to rip away their new-found healthcare, make it easier for mining companies to kill them, and defund the Appalachian Regional Commission. Tell those rural voters in Michigan and Wisconsin that Republicans want to rip away their new-found healthcare and defund the Great Lakes Restoration Project. It doesn’t matter if none of these things actually become law. It does matter that these are the opening moves by Republicans as soon as they have total power. It does matter to create the narrative about the Republican party working against the interests of the people who put them in power. Even Trump himself, who never admits to anything, agrees that Trumpcare will hurt his voters.

Now is the time to start the narrative for the 2018 elections. Democrats and associated PACs should start running advertisements now in competitive House districts using the Republicans own words against them. Framing the narrative now will put even more pressure on vulnerable House Republicans, creating more fissures in the GOP majority. And it will also set up the follow-up narrative describing Republicans and Trump as weak and ineffective for not getting anything done. Get to work, Tom Perez.