The GOP Screamed About Debt—Now They’re Burning $2B a Day
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-gop-screamed-about-debtnow-theyre
The GOP Screamed About Debt—Now They’re Burning $2B a Day
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-gop-screamed-about-debtnow-theyre
49 Comments
Tim Miller takes on the hypocrisy behind Washington’s deficit panic. After Elon Musk and Trump allies promised massive spending cuts and warned about “debt slavery,” federal spending kept climbing—and now the Iran war is burning through billions per day.
Why do people keep swallowing what they say with apparent pleasure…?
That’s because complaining about the debt was always performative for 99% of them.
If it looks like the house flips this year we should start hearing again about how much of a crisis the national debt is by Christmas. Right after immigrant convoy season.
That’s what they do every single time they’re in charge! It’s like some kind of spending “Groundhog Day” where everyone just keeps repeating the same day.
If a Republican is in office it’s ok.
This has been happening for generations. The right will bitch and moan about spending… when dems are in power. The moment they have it, they spend like drunken sailors.
Deficits only matter when republicans can stop dems from spending. They don’t matter when republicans can give shady no bid contracts to their buddies.
This has been happening for my entire life and I’m 45. The GOP does not care about deficits or debts. They never have.
When Republicans pretend to care about something there is no requirement that we pretend to believe them.
they have no principles at all. they’re opportunists fueled by hatred
Yeah they starved kids to death to get money to kill people in their religious war.
The GOP cares about 2 things: Access and Power. That’s it. There is nothing they would not support if it supplied those 2 things.
Yes, and?
The GOP has never not been hypocritical about the national debt.
It was always a political weapon to attack dems and progress.
And once they bankrupt the country theyll make sure anyone cleaning up after them gets harassed daily about the deficit. Mmw
They only care if the money is being used to better people’s lives.
War is good and profitable.
Health care, food, education, free elections are bad.
Basic rubelican’s mantra.
Ahhh the tale as old as time…
Because not for one second have they ever cared about debt, their sole goal in life is collect all money and resources for themselves.
Republicans and the corrupt media only “care” about the debt when Democrats in charge.
Trumpers have no personal beliefs aside from what he tells them.
*YAWN*, the GOP has been the cheerleader creating the majority of the national debt for around 45 years, ever since Ronald Reagan was elected. Pretty much every claim of “fiscal conservatism” from the GOP are massive lies, and have been so at least since then, if not before.
What is war good for……
Because the debt isn’t theirs they don’t care. They’re looting the coffers at every turn so inflation and the country’s debt is irrelevant to them.
Elon Musk has been REAL quiet lately. The Epstein class really are world-class hypocrites.
2B a day is just the beginning. It’ll get worse.
Never trust a member of the GOP
any minute now Elon’s DOGE AI will cut spending on cancer meds for bedridden children claiming it’ll make up the difference after hallucinating a few extra zeros in the ‘tax dollars saved’ column
That’s literally what republicans do every single time they are in power.
Because they are liars.
The Reagan regime created the deficit as we know it and every Republican regime since has ballooned it.
Guardians Of Pedophiles… funny enough… now they dont care about that.
I actually care about the debt and I deeply resent the GOP for how they’ve weaponized the issue and driven up the debt. We’re heading for deep social service cuts that are unavoidable due to their actions.
How affordable is student loan forgiveness now?
And Democrats will have the biggest mess probably ever to clean up at every level…
In before they claim Iran will pay us for the privilege of being bombed.
hypocrisy isn’t a gop burn strategy its their brand
No but you see that debt is gonna come rolling back down once we plunder the entirety of Iran!!
God, these fucking ghouls.
They’ve always been full of shit. They are reprobate racists and bigots. Fiscal conservatism was a cudgel to take away from minorities.
Republicans don’t argue in good faith.
Because they never gave a shit about the budget or the debt. Just like they don’t give a shit about anything. They have no values.
« The pedophile’s diversion is costing Americans $2B a day »
Not a single person that is MAGA has any standards/convictions anymore. We need to find a way to take advantage of their stupidity somehow, for the good of the public, rather than hold on to any hope of changing it.
The Trump run government is doing nothing about saving Social Security, providing healthcare coverage, getting the national debt under control. Instead they are burning 🔥 money faster than if they took a blowtorch to piles of $100 million dollars and there’s no end in sight!
The GOP is a cancer.
People honestly have no idea what is happening. Pay attention: tech bros are intentionally devolving the power of the state to tech companies. They are doing this very slowly so you don’t notice, but you can go back into the literature since the Patriot Act and see how this is happening.
All of the government contracts are going to go though tech companies, if they aren’t already, so that the government is no longer holding any power. It’s all performative at this point. Thiel, Zuckerberg, Musk, etc. are in fact running everything.
That’s only one part of the big picture. They are also doing this at the local level. That’s what the media consolidation over 40 years was intended to do. There’s no longer any such thing as local news because that would put a speed bump in their plan. Local governments? Same thing. Everything is national for a reason, that’s how they exert total control from the top down.
When they finally pull the plug on all federal spending, it will be the same thing that happened after the Roman Empire fell. Countries and cities will revert to network states and fiefdoms run by tech bros. This is what is happening. Democracy is dead in the water. In the postliberal era of tech-run fiefdoms, we are returning to company towns and government by the richest.
Debt is only ever a problem when the opponent is in power, it’s the same in Australia, debt and deficit disaster is screamed day in day out by the right until they are in power and then it’s just gone and no longer an issue at all
It’s never been about the debt, nor about prosecuting pedophiles…
If it was, they would have looked at the debt Trump racked up during his first term. It’s always been about power and white Christian nationalism; whoops did I say the quiet part out loud?
[THE TWO SANTAS STRATEGY: HOW THE GOP HAS USED AN ECONOMIC SCAM TO MANIPULATE AMERICANS FOR 40 YEARS](https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/thom-hartmann/two-santas-strategy-gop-used-economic-scam-manipulate-americans-40-years/)
> Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
> First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the U.S. debt as far and as fast as possible.
> This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
> Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending money.
> This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.
> And, sure enough, here we are now with a Democrat in the White House. Following their Two Santas strategy, Republicans are again squealing about the national debt and refusing to raise the debt ceiling, imperiling Biden’s economic recovery as well as his Build Back Better plans.
> And, once again, the media is covering it as a “Biden Crisis!” rather than what it really is: a cynical political and media strategy devised by Republicans in the 1970s, fine-tuned in the 1980s and 1990s, and rolled out every time a Democrat is in the White House.
********
> To make this work, the Republicans would first have to turn the classical world of economics — which had operated on a simple demand-driven equation for seven thousand years — on its head. Everybody understood that demand — “working-class wages” — drove economies because working people spent most of their money in the marketplace, producing “demand” for factory output goods and services.
> To lay the ground for Two Santa Clauses, in 1974 Wanniski invented a new phrase — “Supply-Side Economics” — and said the reason economies grew wasn’t because people had good union jobs and thus enough money to buy things but, instead, because business made things available for sale, thus tantalizing people to part with their money.
> The more products (supply) there were in the stores, he said, the faster the economy would grow. And the more money we gave rich people and their corporations (via tax cuts) the more stuff (supply) they’d generously produce for us to think about buying. At a glance, this move by the Republicans seems irrational, cynical and counterproductive. It certainly defies classic understandings of economics. But if you consider Jude Wanniski’s playbook, it makes complete sense.
As an American, I want to remind the world: Trump is a convicted felon, rapist, child sex offender, failed businessman who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times between 1991 and 2009. He is a fraud, a liar, and a warmonger, a thief and a grifter who is in the pockets of many other world leaders. Me and my comrades are oppose any war efforts funded by the American Department of war..’
In May 2024, Donald Trump was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the state of New York, making him the first former U.S. president convicted of a crime. He was sentenced to an unconditional discharge in January 2025, which means he faces no jail time or probation but retains a criminal record.
In 2023, a federal jury found Donald Trump liable for sexually abusing writer E. Jean Carroll. He was found liable for battery and defamation, awarding her $5 million.
Trumps business entities have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection six times. These filings occurred for his casino and hotel properties in 1991, 1992 (two separate filings), 2004, 2009, and 2014.
In February 2024, a New York judge ruled that Donald Trump and his companies engaged in a years-long scheme to inflate his net worth on financial statements to secure better loan terms. He was ordered to pay over $350 million in penalties and was temporarily barred from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation.
So far Donald Trump’s name is mentioned more than 1,000 times in the Epstein files. Other estimates based on broader searches that include related terms, his wife, and his Mar-a-Lago club have identified over 5,300 files containing more than 38,000 references to him.
They’ve been doing this for decades. People don’t learn, for some reason. I’m done trying to figure it out.
Every single time the GOP takes control the debt spirals up like crazy. And every time the democrats take control the GOP complains about the debt.
The debt they made.
Can we learn from this already? Thanks fam