Kevin Williamson of National Review Online is no fan of congressional Republicans’ latest tax proposal.
Republicans want to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion — while the government already is running a deficit — and they propose to offset those cuts with wishful thinking.
In control of both houses of Congress with a nominally Republican president in the White House, they are pursuing the dead opposite of the immigration policy touted by Donald Trump on the campaign trail, and considering something close to the opposite of their longstanding promises on health care. They are embarrassed by their inability to execute any proposal of great consequence, and have retreated into that great Republican safe space: tax cuts, the more irresponsible the better.
Congressional Republicans argue that they can in good conscience pass these tax cuts without any corresponding spending cuts or other countervailing measures on the theory that the tax cuts will produce economic growth, and that this economic growth will be so substantial that it will entirely offset the revenue theoretically lost to the tax cuts. There is very little evidence to support this theory, but Republicans remain fond of it.
