It's no surprise that Republicans gave a huge tax cut America's richest citizens and now want to balance the books on the backs of everyone else. You could see it coming from a mile away—they would balloon the deficit/debt by passing a gigantic tax cut for the 1 percent and then claim the only way to save the country was by cutting services the other 99 percent depend on. Now, the guy in charge of the effort to retain GOP control of the House , Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, is admitting that’s exactly what they hope to do as Republicans make their case for re-election to the American people. Here’s an excerpt of Stivers’ interview with CNBC’s John Harwood:
Harwood: No misgivings about a tax cut that was not paid for, that's allowing debt and deficits to rise like it is now?
Stivers: I do think we need to deal with our some of our spending. We've got to try to figure out how to spend less.
Harwood: Entitlements? Social Security, Medicare?
Stivers: Yeah...
Stivers tried to keep Harwood on welfare specifically, talking about putting people back to work ("I don't want to be, you know, mean and kick people off of programs, but ..." Stivers said. Well, that's heartening.) But the real spending is on Social Security and Medicare, and Stivers knows it. So if the GOP is trying to balance the books with spending cuts rather than bringing in more revenues, then Social Security and Medicare are necessarily on the table, even if Republicans don't want to admit it upfront.
Harwood: But also Social Security and Medicare, right?
Stivers: The only way we're going to be able to fix Social Security and Medicare is for the two parties to come together — the way that Ronald Reagan did with Tip O'Neill — and figure out how to fix them together. I hope we can do that, I believe it's the right thing to do.
As MSNBC’s Steve Benen pointed out: “It’s quite a message Republicans are taking into the midterm elections, isn’t it? Donald Trump’s party pushed through unpopular tax breaks, which led to unpopular deficits, which GOP leaders hope to address though unpopular cuts to celebrated pillars of modern American society such as Social Security and Medicare.”
The GOP plan: Robin Hood in reverse, as Nancy Pelosi has said on several occasions.