Thom Hartmann explains MAGA two Santa Clause Theory. Hartmann explains how MAGAs cut taxes for the rich hoping to force Democrats to “shoot their own Santa Clause” or that is cut their social programs – especially Social Security and Medicare. (9:36)

America now has a Speaker of the House who has a target on programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. As explained in Thom Hartmann’s brilliant video above Speaker Mike Johnson blames the debt on the Democrats social programs. 

What is never talked about and what MAGA politicians refuse to even acknowledge is that the basic generator of our debt and deficit is tax cuts for the rich. MAGAs, including Iowa’s poorly informed and puppet like delegation of Miller-Meeks, Hinson, Nunn and Feenstra, will refuse to talk about raising taxes. The conversation is only around cutting services and programs for those who will be most greatly affected by such cuts.

Corporate media who are among the greatest recipients of the Tax Cut Santa Clause and the millionaires and billionaires who run these corporations and also big recipients of the Tax Cut Santa Clause have spent decades steering American opinion to believe that tax cuts for the exceptionally wealthy are good and a pittance for the poor is really bad. That is the gospel that most people will regurgitate when asked simply because they have been brainwashed by the media.

Last week, the Treasury Department released a report that released new figures related to the 2023 budget that showed a troubling drop in the nation’s tax revenue compared to GDP. In an analysis that I wish I could post verbatim, Common Dreams reporter Jon Queally analyzes the report and shows how tax cuts for the wealthy drive the debt and deficit while the pittance for the poor and Social Security gets the blame.   

While much of the reporting on the Treasury figures painted a picture of various and overlapping dynamics to explain the surge in the deficit—including higher payments on debt due to interest rates, tax filing waivers related to extreme weather events, the impact of a student loan forgiveness program that was later rescinded, or a dip in capital gains receipts—progressive tax experts say none of those complexities should act to shield what’s at the heart of a budget that brings in less than it spends: tax giveaways to the rich.

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“The point I want to make again and again and again is that, relative to the last time CBO was projecting stable debt/GDP, spending is down, not up,” Kogan said in a tweet Friday night. “It’s lower revenue that’s 100% responsible for the change in debt projections. If you take away nothing else, leave with this point.”

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On Friday, the office of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) cited those same numbers in a press release responding to the Treasury’s new report.

“Tax giveaways for the wealthy are continuing to starve the federal government of needed revenue: those passed by former Presidents Trump and Bush have added $10 trillion to the debt and account for 57 percent of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001,” read the statement. “If not for those tax cuts, U.S. debt would be declining as a share of the economy.”

Whitehouse, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, said the dip in federal revenue and growth in the overall deficit both have the same primary cause: GOP fealty to the wealthy individuals and powerful corporations that bankroll their campaigns.

“In their blind loyalty to their mega-donors, Republicans’ fixation on giant tax cuts for billionaires has created a revenue problem that is driving up our national debt,” Whitehouse said Friday night. “Even as federal spending fell over the last year relative to the size of the economy, the deficit increased because Republicans have rigged the tax code so that big corporations and the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share.”

While this is a pipe dream on my account it would be so wonderful to have reporters calling MAGA politicians on their claims that social programs are driving the country into debt and deficit and force those MAGA politicians to directly answer for what the real drivers of debt and deficit are: tax cuts for the extreme wealthy. 

Plus I would so love to see those same reporters box MAGA politicians into answering what they intend to do about those excessive tax cuts and how they would heal the problems such huge gaps in wealth and income have done to our country.

A boy can dream, can’t he? When the election comes around next year I will be looking for candidates who face our economic problems with the reality based view that tax cuts for the rich are the real culprit of problems.