Like a son who murders both his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is an orphan, Senator Mitch McConnell is claiming that exploding budget deficits caused by Republican tax cuts need to be cured by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Can you say “chutzpah”?
With less than three weeks left until the midterms, McConnell may have just handed the Democrats the economic argument they had been longing for at the worst possible moment for the Republicans. According to the latest projections, the odds of Republicans retaining control of the House are fading. The number crunchers now peg the likelihood of a House controlled by Democrats at better than 83 percent.
{mosads}While the boomlet after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh may have saved the Republican majority in the Senate, it may have run aground in the House battlegrounds. When Mia Love is running in a dead heat and the seat held by Jim Jordan is no longer “safe”, the president and his party have plenty to worry about. That was before the Senate majority leader stepped on a figurative grenade and signaled that he was ready to throw granny from a moving train to placate the donor gods.
Even as the 2020 presidential campaign for Donald Trump vacuums up huge dollars, House Republicans are being treated like the neglected stepchildren of their party, being outraised and outspent by Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats at every turn. The latest campaign spending reports reveal that more than 70 Democratic House hopefuls have bested their Republican opponents in the race for campaign dollars.
The Democratic fundraising advantage appears to be historic, according to stats guru Nate Silver. This week, he tweeted: “Democrats have raised almost 2/3 of the total money for the House … Despite the fact that the GOP holds the incumbency advantage. Never been anything like that before in our House fundraising data, which goes back to 1998.”
The numbers fittingly tell the story. Democrat Max Rose bested incumbent Republican Dan Donovan by five to one in fundraising for Staten Island’s congressional seat. In New York’s Hudson Valley, Antonio Delgado, the Democratic challenger, raised $3.8 million in the last quarter. By comparison, John Faso, the incumbent Republican representative in his first term, only added $1 million to his campaign coffers.
From the looks of things, it appears that Republicans are far more enchanted with their president than with the House Republican. It is also safe to say that only the Koch Brothers will miss Paul Ryan when he is gone. To add insult to injury, McConnell inadvertently tossed the Democrats a lifeline just a day after Senator Elizabeth Warren decided to share with the world that her DNA proved that she was of fractional Native American descent. His remarks also followed hours after a federal judge dismissed the Stormy Daniels defamation suit against the president. Before our eyes, “Cocaine Mitch” was morphing into “Buzzkill McConnell.”
As to be expected, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee seized on McConnell’s comments, and the pile on began. Senator Ron Wyden weighed in: “Here’s what this means: SOCIAL SECURITY is on the ballot. MEDICARE is on the ballot. MEDICAID is on the ballot.” Not to be outdone, Warren gave a campaign lesson of her own: “Step 1: GOP explodes the deficit with $1.5 trillion in tax giveaways to wealthy donors. Step 2: GOP uses the deficit they created as an excuse to slash Social Security and Medicare.” As a matter of fact, this time she was persuasive.
If the tax cuts had trouble gaining traction with the public before McConnell’s pronouncement, they will face an even tougher slog now. Early on, the cuts were the bane of wealthy blue America as the legislation effectively ended the state and local tax deduction upon which many Californians and New Yorkers turned to for relief. Now the rest of the country can detest them as well and look forward to Election Day.
Even before McConnell’s proclamation, the cuts were rejected by voters by a double digit margin. Contrary to Republican hopes and promises, the cuts have once again failed to pay for themselves. Now America is being asked to foot the bill for the Republican gift to the donor class. Nancy Pelosi’s hands must be tingling. The Speaker’s gavel is within her reach.
Lloyd Green was the opposition research counsel to the George H.W. Bush campaign in 1988 and later served in the U.S. Department of Justice. He is now the managing member of research and analytics firm Ospreylytics.