During my time as a Democratic member of Congress from Georgia, one of my enduring memories was being lectured by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi that she cared more about the deficit and national debt than any Republican!
This was in 2021. when Democrats had a four-vote majority in the U.S. House, and I had joined with a handful of moderate Democrats to insist that Build Back Better, the $3.5 trillion social spending bill that Pelosi and President Joe Biden wanted to pass, be fully offset by some combination of revenue increases or spending reductions. And not just rhetorically “paid for” by gimmicks and rosy scenarios but officially scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Of course, in the face of this massive spending bill, I scoffed at Pelosi’s assertion. But now, as I take in the $5.8 trillion in proposed deficit spending that the Republican House and Senate have been advancing, maybe she has a point.
Remarkably, the Republicans are planning a party-line bill that would be the largest one-time increase in our national debt in modern American history — more debt than the American Rescue Plan, the CARES Act and the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act combined and more than President Biden oversaw in his entire four-year term.
Even worse, to wiggle around procedural guardrails meant to restrain this kind of debt increase, Senate Republicans are leveraging a budgeting gimmick where they unilaterally declare that $3.8 trillion of proposed tax cut extensions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act actually have no fiscal impact. Meanwhile, it’s unclear how or whether they will cover the additional $500 billion in spending increases and $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts.
During deliberations, some Republican members of Congress were rightfully concerned about the fiscal impact of this bill. They now claim that they have a commitment from Speaker Mike Johnson that there will be $2 trillion in spending cuts to offset the cost of the bill.
But even if they are able to deliver on that $2 trillion, there will still be $3.8 trillion in deficit spending unanswered — significantly more than the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan and more even than the original version of Build Back Better.
This is happening at a time when our $36 trillion in gross national debt (equivalent to 123% of Gross Domestic Product) is starting to take a toll. We are now spending more on interest than on national defense or on Medicare.
Recent economic models have suggested that the economic drag from increases in debt and interest rates may fully offset any economic lift from tax cuts. And not far off in the future, we, our children and grandchildren may well be condemned to the economic equivalent of debtors’ prison, with interest payments crowding out private investment and public priorities and creating a long grinding drag on the nation’s future growth and prosperity.
President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policy and threats against the Federal Reserve Bank’s independence may hasten this future by precipitating a loss of confidence in our sovereign debt with the dangerous potential to drive up interest costs. If investors lose confidence in our debt, then we could face a debt spiral, hyperinflation or worse.
Yes, the legislation that Republicans are considering includes extending 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions that will sunset this year. If they fail to pass the bill, almost all of us will see our taxes go up.
But if they don’t pay for it, it’s not really a tax cut so much as yet another cash advance on our national credit card and one we will have to pay off in the very near future — plus interest. The long-term prosperity of this country likely depends far more on closing our $2 trillion annual deficit than on tax cuts.
Republicans claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility; the least they can do is pay for their bill, in full, with no gimmicks.
I know a thing or two about political pressure. When I stepped in to force a renegotiation on Build Back Better, Republicans ran $5 million in ads against me for the proposed “pay fors,” which included increasing the number of IRS agents to catch tax cheats and requiring the federal government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. On the other side, my own party savaged me for holding up the Democrats’ dream bill that included almost every social program and tax benefit they had ever wanted to enact for the past 30 years.
Whenever I brought up fiscal responsibility, progressive Democrats would scold me that “this is just something that Republicans care about when they are not in power.” They pointed to the $1.5 trillion in deficit financing for the original 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Republicans passed along party lines.
At the end of the day, I and other moderate Democrats prevailed on Build Back Better. While there were many things we all wanted in the larger bill, “Build Back Better” was eventually reframed and refocused as the Inflation Reduction Act.
This legislation was not only fully paid for, but it left money on the table for deficit reduction, with no gimmicks, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office.
So I’m throwing down the gauntlet to my Republican friends who speak so eloquently and passionately about the danger of our national debt: Prove it. Pay for your legislation and pay for it without gimmicks.
Pay for it, if for no other reason than to try to prove Nancy Pelosi wrong.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Carolyn Bourdeaux is a former member of Congress from Georgia’s 7th District. She also is executive director of the Concord Coalition and Concord Action, organizations dedicated to education and advocacy in support of fiscal responsibility.
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