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Economic downturn
After living through the most disastrous Republican presidency of our lifetimes, we’re no longer surprised by Republican threats to sabotage economic recovery and restoring American life under President Biden. An anti-American fringe now controls the party.
We’ve survived the worst—a Republican president’s failure to prevent 600,000 American deaths in a pandemic shattering our economy and confining us to our homes for a year and a half. The last thing we need now are Republicans throwing sand in the gears of rebuilding America.
But this week Senate Republicans intend to block legislation to fund the government under Biden and prevent raising the national debt limit so the government can pay trillions of dollars in bills Congress ran up under Donald Trump to fight the pandemic and continue paying for the enormous Trump tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to the wealthy.
Once again, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will be leading a filibuster aimed at forcing the U.S. to default its debts. When Cruz first tried that in 2013 in a failed attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act (ACA), many other Republicans condemned him as an irresponsible jerk. Paul O’Neill, former treasury secretary under George W. Bush, called threatening to wreck the economy to destroy health care domestic terrorism. John Boehner, then House Speaker, described it as insanity.
Financial Armageddon?
Now the insane terrorists control their party. Most Republicans, including minority leader Mitch McConnell, will be voting with Cruz this week. But what hasn’t changed is economic experts continue to warn forcing the U.S. to default on its debts will have catastrophic national and global consequences.
“It would be financial Armageddon,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “Stock prices would crater. We’d all be less wealthy, instantaneously.” Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, said a U.S. financial default “could cause an immediate, literally cascading catastrophe of unbelievable proportions and damage America for 100 years.” Interest rates would soar on mortgages, credit cards, car loans and borrowing by every business and every level of government.
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The strangest part about Republicans refusing to raise the national debt limit is no one in the party or the nation really cares much about government deficit spending anymore. In 2013, a Gallup poll found 20% of Americans considered deficit spending by the federal government to be the nation’s top problem. In August, only 2% of Americans believed that.
GOP Disaster Scenario
Here’s the most likely explanation for that dramatic plummet in public concern about arcane budget issues very few voters even understand. The 2013 poll came shortly after Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s partisan lies as Mitt Romney’s vice presidential running mate in 2012. He pretended America was on the verge of a total economic collapse because of deficit spending by Democrats under President Obama. The nation actually was experiencing record growth.
Ryan never really believed his disaster scenario. It was a political scam by Ryan as House budget chairman to justify the savagery of his tea party budgets eviscerating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the ACA, food assistance for hungry families and other government benefits for Americans in need.
Ryan was finally exposed as a political fraud as House Speaker when he collaborated with President Trump and Senate Republicans to pass the largest increase in deficit spending in history as long as Republicans were spending it and not Democrats.
One of Ryan’s last official acts in politics was passing Trump’s enormous 2017 tax cut costing two trillion dollars in deficit spending with 80% of the benefits over a decade going to multimillion-dollar corporations and the wealthiest individuals in America, billionaires and millionaires like Trump and Ryan.
Unpopular Tax Cut
It also made history as the most unpopular U.S. tax cut ever passed by Congress, creating a political backlash in the 2018 midterms returning a Democratic majority to the House and Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. Ryan didn’t stick around for the political consequences. He suddenly decided against running for re-election in 2018, retiring from public office a much richer man.
The immediate retribution from voters in 2018 is unusual in politics. Republicans increasingly count on short attention spans to quickly bury their most outrageous acts, even violent insurrection. They also know voters having little interest in the intricacies of economics.
By disrupting the economy at the worst possible time—during another surge in the pandemic as a result of Republicans egging on anti-vaxxers and discouraging intelligent public health measures—they’re pretty sure voters will blame Biden for all the chaos they’re creating. He’s the president, isn’t he? It will make great attack ads.
Republicans have been threatening to shut down the government while holding the economy hostage ever since Newt Gingrich was House Speaker in the 1990s. Everyone’s read all those doomsday quotes before from economists about how suicide bomber politicians could destroy America for the next 100 years.
It never happens. Republicans always back down. They’d be crazy not to, right?
