Republicans Don’t Actually Have to Make Social Safety Net Cuts Again

In Emine Yücel’s recently published article on Republicans’ struggles to pass a series of President Trump’s priorities ahead of the midterm elections, she delves into a crucial point that doesn’t generate much discussion.

Since Republican leaders don’t want to neutralize the filibuster in order to pass the SAVE America Act, they are putting on a big performance for Trump to show that they will find a way to package all of his needs – passing the voter suppression bill and funding his war in Iran as well as the Department of Homeland Security – into another reconciliation package. Republicans plan to finance new spending linked to Trump’s latest obsessions with new cuts to the social safety net, under the guise of eradicating endemic “fraud,” the administrator’s new favorite word.

But in many cases, they won’t actually do it to have to do that. The new spending is just a convenient pretext for further cuts.

You will recall that last summer, congressional Republicans justified the devastating cuts they made to Medicaid and other social welfare programs by shrugging their shoulders at the deficit, arguing that they had to do it to offset the cost of permanently extending most of Trump’s personal and corporate tax cuts. This time it’s different: Many of their priorities in this round — chief among them the war in Iran — do not run afoul of the same Senate rule, because increased spending is not expected to linger beyond the 10-year budget window. However, they are already making a big show of telling everyone that they simply have to make budget cuts. A key extract from Emine’s article:

Republicans have largely been obfuscating when talking about the cuts to welfare programs they are once again considering. They point to the national deficit and say they will have to offset new spending with cuts in order to balance the budget. They attack self-described “deficit hawks,” saying these lawmakers won’t support a reconciliation plan unless additional spending isn’t offset.

But reconciliation rules do not require them to offset the cost of any spending increases within the budget window, which is typically a 10-year period.

“If they’re putting together a bill that, for example, gives money to the Department of Defense and funds ICE for a certain number of years, there’s no need for that money to be offset,” Michael Linden, a senior policy fellow at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, told TPM. “In fact, the reconciliation bill they passed last year increased the deficit.”