President Trump promised to “Make America Great Again,” but his budget-busting debt deal with profligate Democrats abandons that project in a weak-kneed play to save him from actually having to fight a tough fight for budget sanity before reelection.
While the political reality of a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives surely limits Trump’s bargaining power, it’s baffling that the Art of the Deal author negotiated away all his leverage by stating his real bottom line at the start. He sent Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a singular demand: a deal that avoids a debt-limit fight or a potential government shutdown before the 2020 election.
It’s déjà vu.
The Trump White House came to Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer with the same simple ask that has been Mitch McConnell’s singular policy principle for about a decade: Please don’t cause a budget crisis that will get blamed on us!
Any negotiator will tell you that when you have one inflexible demand and you let it be known immediately, you get only that, and you get at it a steep price. In this case, the price is $321 billion of spending over the bipartisan budget caps.
Those 2011 budget caps, which are supposed to apply through 2023, were the single best accomplishment of the Republican House during the Obama years. The government is smaller because of them, and the debt and deficit are lower. Now the caps are out the window, making it clear that even when Republicans promise and swear and put into law a pledge of future frugality, they don’t really mean it.
It’s no wonder that the Republican Study Committee and House Freedom Caucus denounced the deal. After all, hundreds of Democrats voted for the bill, including socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She hates the increased defense spending, but growing the government is apparently worth feeding the war machine.
For decades, the national debt has careened toward crisis, but with our debt-to-GDP ratio already at the highest rate since World War II, controlling spending has never been more important.
Yes, the debt problem is not mostly about congressional appropriations but is mostly about Social Security and Medicare. But pointing to out-of-control entitlements to endorse budget-busting appropriations is like pointing to the danger of heroin to defend binge drinking.
We stopped being surprised years ago by Republican leaders who love spending, or at least hate confrontation more. But we were told Trump would be different. He was supposed to be a great dealmaker. Today, Trump looks like the old GOP establishment he supposedly defeated.
When will the real dealmaker show up? After the GOP wins the next election?
Please. We’ve heard that one before.
