The GOP's tax cuts for corporations and the rich are expected to cost the federal government at least $1.5 trillion over 10 years or more than $100 billion per year.
Not coincidentally, the federal deficit increased by about $113 billion in fiscal 2018.
The federal deficit has increased to its highest level since 2012 and congressional Republicans are finally acknowledging it, but they say this is a sign that it's time to cut spending on health care.
During Mitch McConnell's interview with Bloomberg this morning, the Senate majority leader said the soaring deficit is "not a Republican problem" and we must cut spending in a bipartisan fashion.
"It’s disappointing but it’s not a Republican problem," McConnell said in an interview with Bloomberg News when asked about the rising deficits and debt.
"It’s a bipartisan problem: Unwillingness to address the real drivers of the debt by doing anything to adjust those programs to the demographics of America in the future." [...]
McConnell said it would be "very difficult to do entitlement reform, and we’re talking about Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid," with one party in charge of Congress and the White House.
"I think it’s pretty safe to say that entitlement changes, which is the real driver of the debt by any objective standard, may well be difficult if not impossible to achieve when you have unified government," McConnell said.
This is a Republican problem. It may be their biggest problem.
Every single time Republicans control the government, they explode the deficit. And they do so recklessly. It's not as if they're spending all that cash on worthwhile endeavors like infrastructure and innovation. No, they spend it on tax cuts and bloated defense contracts that in some cases the Pentagon didn't even ask for. In 2017, Republicans in Congress increased defense spending even more than Trump asked for.
Now, I'm sure Mitch McConnell didn't mean it exactly this way, but he appears to have conceded that the only way to restore fiscal sanity is to return at least partial control of the government to Democrats.
I suppose we should thank him for his endorsement.