It is time for Democrats to take back the narrative as the party of fiscal responsibility.
For too long now, the Republican Party has done a masterful job at convincing the American electorate the GOP is the party that always has to come into office and clean house after a Democratic administration sunsets. During the four years that Joe Biden was president, Republicans griped at the gargantuan deficit the executive oversaw. Mind you, the deficit is even bigger today under Donald Trump, currently estimated at $1.3 trillion this year according to usafacts.org, but is expected to reach $2.1 trillion by the end of the year. This is not made-up numbers that some people here in Santa Clarita would simply accuse as bogus information to hurt Republicans. This comes from the Congressional Budget Office.
But this is nothing new with just Donald Trump. Under every single Republican president dating back to Ronald Reagan, the deficit has gone up. According to the U.S. Debt Clock’s website, the deficit has increased under every Republican president from the start of their time in office.
Meanwhile, take President Bill Clinton who started his tenure with a $200 billion deficit and left with a budget surplus. Then look at Barack Obama, the guy who Republicans just want to hate so badly, but cannot seem to find very many legitimate reasons why they actually hate him. When Obama was inaugurated, he encountered a deficit at $1.4 trillion, but left office with that number more than cut in half. Let us even throw Joe Biden into this conversation. Sure, he was not a frugal spender by any means; but he also cut the deficit by nearly $1 trillion.
With all of this being said, why do Republicans still own the national narrative that they are responsible fiscal spenders?
The short answer is the idea of cutting taxes always seems appealing to people who do not pay attention to politics regularly. The problem is that people do not know who those tax cuts are really going to benefit. Tax cuts under a Republican administration always mean these cuts are not only benefitting rich people disproportionately, but there will also be cuts to the social safety net as well in order to slow the bleeding of the deficit; mind you, it never seems to work as shown by the data. Republicans have been able to take advantage of the ambivalent voters across America and convince them tax cuts are good for the working man, but they also need to give up their subsidized health care for this to happen.
This applies at the state level as well. Republicans in Santa Clarita argue that California Democrats are big spenders, yet they also plan to vote for a guy who wants to cut income tax and implement a flat tax. Sure, ignore Gavin Newsom’s balanced budget and shake things up. But with that tax cut, how do we make up the rest?
Jack Teoli
Newhall
