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Trump budget deal shows the tea party is very dead

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Ah, memories. Remember how presidential candidate Donald Trump grandly promised to eliminate the federal debt in eight years? That's a memory he apparently hopes we forget.

You could hear that in the absence of "debt" or "deficit" in the high praise he enthusiastically tweeted Thursday ("I am totally with you!") for the two-year budget deal that White House and congressional budget negotiators reached earlier in the week.

Unmentioned in the president's tweet is how much the national debt has grown on Trump's watch to a new record, more than $22 trillion in February for the first time.

The deal worked out by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will raise spending by $320 billion, if it passes both chambers and the president signs it.

That signing appears certain, even though the deal blows right through the spending caps put in place by the 2011 Budget Control Act. That law, once seen as the crowning Republican achievement of Democratic President Barack Obama's years, set strict caps and enforced them with automatic spending cuts.

This major push for fiscal prudence was imposed on the Obama administration by the rise of the tax-fighting tea party movement, which popped up early in Obama's first term and helped Republicans win back the House in 2010.

 

Where are they now? The grassroots movement that was united more by social media networks than formal organizational structure seems hard to find these days, except in fundraising emails and the resumes of conservative House Freedom Caucus members.

Just as the late Ross Perot's 1992 independent run for president can be heard echoing in tea party rhetoric, the movement's spirit and supporters appear to have been absorbed into Trump's MAGA movement.

But not entirely. Trump, as he has shown us before, isn't much of a deficit hawk. Quite the contrary, his promises cover all that he figures his base is looking for -- a Mexican wall, a "better and cheaper" replacement for Obamacare, etc. -- and virtually no details about how to pay for it all.

Of course, somewhere along the line, the debt must be paid, or at least that's what the conventional Washington wisdom has told us. But Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged a new reality, according to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's memoir, by declaring, "You know, Paul, (President Ronald) Reagan proved deficits don't matter." Reagan had won reelection despite a rising deficit on his watch.

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(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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