One Bill, Two Bill

Much is uncertain, but the budget deficit? It's going up.

To begin with, absolutely no one should be fooled into believing that the size of future federal budget deficits will be a significant constraint on Donald Trump or most congressional Republicans. That certainly includes the radicals in the House Freedom Caucus.

Note what they said in their grievance-starting letter about Mike Johnson after they (reluctantly) voted to make him Speaker: They insisted that “any reconciliation package reduces spending and the deficit in real terms with respect to the dynamic score of tax and spending policies under recent growth trends.” Translated from GOP-budget speak, that means that they want to rig the estimates of the effects of the tax and spending changes they want so that deficit-exploding policies will count as reducing future deficits.

This is consistent with the way Republicans have talked about budget deficits for some time, really going back to the movement conservative shift away from budget-balancing way back in 1978. What Republicans say about budget “deficits” doesn’t really make sense if you read it as statements about the difference between federal government receipts and spending. It does make sense, however, if read as the difference – in either direction – between what they believe are the optimal level of spending and taxes. So spending too much (in their view) on food stamps increases the “deficit” – but spending too little on defense, for GOP defense hawks, also counts as increasing the “deficit.”

At any rate back in the real world I’d expect the deficit to go up, up, up, up, up.

The only caveat? It’s definitely possible that a handful of Republicans really do care about the actual budget deficit, and if they’re willing to fight for their views then a truly budget-busting bill will be hard to pass.

And of course that’s true for practically everything, given the tiny margin in the House.

The second general point is about the “one beautiful bill” that Trump was talking about over the weekend.