NY Times Story About GOP Deficit Hawks Can't Even Cite One

Alan Rappeport in the New York Times has a piece today entitled, “Trump’s Tax Plan Is a Reckoning for Republican Deficit Hawks“. It is a uniquely titled piece that explores how the admittedly sketchy Trump tax proposal will add $3 to $10 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. The wide variance in estimates is simply because the details in the plan are so lacking.

The story goes on to quote a whole host of independent organizations warning about the dangers of unfunded tax cuts while others spouted the usual Laffer curve nonsense that these massive cuts will spur economic growth.

The most interesting part of the story is that only two current Republican members of Congress are even mentioned in the piece and they are both indicating initial support for the tax plan. According to Rappeport, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch “could live with cuts that added to the deficit if it meant getting the economy moving faster”. And Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania is quoted saying, “Rather than conforming to arbitrary budget constraints, the president’s plan rightfully aims to jump-start investment, which will produce significantly more revenue for the Treasury over the long term than any revenue-neutral tax plan could generate.”

So a story about Republican deficit hawks can not even produce just one of that mythical species. When will the Times and the national media realize that there is no such thing as a Republican deficit hawk. There never has been and there never will be. There are only Republicans who like to rant and rave about the debt and deficit, usually ones they have themselves created, when Democrats are in power. For the last 30 years, the only party that has really had any deficit hawks are Democrats.