For all of my adult life, Republicans have referred to Democrats as the party of tax-and-spend.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the Bush administration refused to endorse tax hikes, liberal Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh called the Republican approach to governance “borrow-and-spend economics” (though he may not have coined the phrase).
Now the Congressional Budget Office says Obamacare features a $1.07 trillion tax hike ($940 billion in new spending plus $130 billion in presumed “deficit reduction”).
Since the CBO predicted earlier this month that Obama’s budget plan would boost deficits by $9.8 trillion over the next decade, before the agency scored Obamacare, we can now say that today’s Democratic Party has hit that rarest of trifectas: Tax and borrow and spend.
Congratulations?
UPDATE: Hold the champagne. The Corner quotes Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., who learned from the CBO that the agency has not completed its analysis of ObamaCare, meaning numbers that made the total look “good” (I know, it’s relative) were leaked by the Democratic leaders to get some positive (again, relative) spin in the press.
