The playbook that showers the rich, spikes the debt, then demands you sacrifice Social Security and healthcare…
On Christmas Eve Thom Hartmann recounted the story of how Republicans turned economics on its head and drove our country’s economy into massive debt that will be paid for by the working people while the rich pile up massive horde of dollars in their money bins.
It is well worth the read to understand how in the 45 years since the so-called Reagan revolution our economy is only for the rich. Led by people like Jude Wanniski and Arthur Laffer (of the infamous Laffer curve) Republicans have sold this country into huge debt which is transfering huge amounts of money to the wealthy from the poor and middle class. The not rich need to understand that voting for Republicans for any office is bad for the country’s economic health.
I will post the lead in. Hopefully you will follow the link to the full post. It is a bit long but very important to understand how the debt and the coffers of the rich grew from Republican policies:
The Washington Post published an article this week titled A Middle-Class Family’s Only Option: A $43,000 Health Insurance Premium about how the GOP’s refusal to extend ACA/Obamacare subsidies means that Stacy Newton’s family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming will have to pay $43,000 a year for health insurance if they want to stay covered.
If, however, the United States had an extra trillion dollars a year — the amount we’re now spending every year on interest payments against the GOP’s $38 trillion national debt — the Newtons would only pay a few hundred dollars a month and we could also have Universal Childcare & Pre-K, Paid Family & Medical Leave, Tuition-Free College, Affordable Housing & No More Homelessness, End Child Poverty & Hunger, and, as mentioned, Affordable Healthcare for all Americans.
thanks to Thom Hartmann
Which raises the question: where did our $38 trillion dollar national debt — that’s costing us $1 trillion a year in interest — come from? After all, when Reagan came into office in 1981 we’d been paying down the debt from WWI and WWII to the point where the entire national debt was only $800 billion (less than $1 trillion).
So, where the hell did all this debt come from? Turns out, you could call it a conspiracy: there’s an amazing backstory to our national debt with the unique name “Two Santas.”
This conspiracy/strategy was developed by a Republican strategist named Jude Wanniski back in the 1970s, and he quite literally transformed America and the GOP with it.
Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
The Two Santas strategy dictates that when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and massively cut taxes on the rich, all to intentionally run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible.
They started this during the Reagan presidency when he dropped the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 28%, and the GOP tripled down on it with four subsequent massive tax cuts for the rich during the presidencies of Bush, Trump I, and Trump II.
Massive tax cuts for the rich and uncontrolled spending during those four Republican presidencies produced three results:
- They stimulated the economy with a sort of sugar high, making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy;
- They raised the national debt dramatically (it’s at $38 trillion today, 100% of which tracks back to Reagan’s, Bush Jr.’s, and Trump’s massive tax cuts and Bush’s two illegal $5 trillion off-the-books wars);
- They produced trillions in additional wealth for the richest families in America, who returned the favor by recycling billions into the campaign coffers of Republican candidates;
- And they made people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
Then comes part two of the one-two punch: when a Democrat gains the White House, Republicans and GOP-friendly media must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve this crisis!”
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