Back in 2009, when Barack Obama was pleading with Congress to rescue a cratering economy, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) blasted the new president’s multi-hundred-billion stimulus package as a “waste” and “more of the same from Washington Democrats still bent on spending their way out of the recession.”

Now Donald Trump is eyeing his own, very pricey public works program and telling Time Magazine “sometimes you have to prime the pump” — the exact turn of phrase Obama used to defend his own view of government stimulus. And Capitol Hill Republicans like Lamborn are suddenly singing a very different tune.


“If it’s very well considered, like expanding an airport that’s become a jammed bottleneck, or deepening a port because it can’t take in all the shipping that it wants to … there are [projects] like that that would make sense to examine and perhaps improve through a stimulus and infrastructure package,” he told POLITICO.

To understand the spell Trump has cast on the Republican Party, just listen to the members of the House Republican Conference these days: The same gang that made slashing spending their singular cause in Congress are now entertaining — and in many cases embracing — the president-elect’s pitch to pump billions into the economy in the form of a massive infrastructure package.

Whether their deference will continue next year — when Republican lawmakers potentially confront voting for proposals that could balloon the deficit or defy their long-held conservative values — is an open question. But so far, with very few exceptions, Capitol Hill Republicans look very much on-board with Trump’s bid to remake the party in his own image.

The contortions extend to issues beyond government spending on roads and bridges. The GOP is also gritting its teeth over Trump’s plan to slap a 35 percent tariff on American companies that ship jobs overseas — an idea that flies in the face of their free-market orthodoxy. Many lawmakers are visibly uncomfortable answering questions about Trump shoring up federal contracts and tax breaks for companies that keep jobs in America, after saying for the past eight years that government shouldn't "pick winners and losers."

“I’m not prepared to criticize the president-elect — at least not until he takes office,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, a libertarian-minded conservative.

Massie (R-Ky.) once accused Republican leaders of supporting “crony capitalism” when they backed the federal Ex-Im Bank, which its critics accused of playing favorites among corporations. But he was silent on Trump’s vocal campaign to dissuade Carrier from shipping hundreds of factory jobs to Mexico using government incentives.

The irony, expressed privately by lawmakers and leadership aides, is glaring. Privately, House Republicans complain that Trump’s infrastructure plan reeks of Obama’s stimulus package (though some argue that Trump, unlike Obama, is likely to rely on public-private partnerships, not just federal dollars, and is likely to be paid for). They say his tariff proposal is ridiculous and using the White House to force companies to stay in the U.S. is inappropriate.

“I’m not prepared to criticize the president-elect — at least not until he takes office,” said Rep. Thomas Massie. | AP Photo

Many are afraid to publicly oppose Trump because of his fondness for retribution and use of Twitter to publicly shame his critics. So now, they’re left crossing their fingers that his rhetoric doesn’t translate into actual policy proposals next year.

“Sometimes it’s the pioneers that end up with arrows in their backs,” said Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.). “Sometimes, for preservation sake in a political sense, people don’t want to pioneer in teeing off on a newly elected, and at this point popular, presidential nominee.”

But the contradiction is hard to overlook. Republicans spent the past decade preaching to anyone who would listen that government spending doesn’t spur economic growth. At one point, their mantra was “cut-grow”: the way to grow the economy is by dramatically reducing federal spending. And for a period of time, they took to the House floor weekly to pass spending cuts suggested online by constituents.

How times have changed.

Georgia Republican Rob Woodall — who once declared that “America tried stimulus — it didn’t work” — said this week that he believes “there is no pathway to a world-class infrastructure to get American goods and services from our heartlands to our ports, that does not include a federal commitment.”

“I’m in favor of that federal commitment,” the transportation committee member continued, saying the panel's members support public-private partnerships. “What I want is a dollar’s worth of value out of a dollar’s worth of federal tax revenue.”

GOP leaders insisted that Donald Trump’s push for tariffs only really means he wants to keep jobs here and spur the economy. | AP Photo

Rep. Dave Brat (R-Va.), a fiscal conservative who unseated ex-Majority Leader Eric Cantor, talked himself in circles when asked about Trump’s pitch for an infrastructure stimulus. “It depends on how you prime the pump,” he said, arguing that an infusion of private capital investment can be a good thing.

But what if that money goes through the federal government, like Trump wants? He hesitated, but suggested maybe it could work: “If it doesn’t go through the tentacles of the ‘buddy system’ up here ... [and] if he can make that work through the private sector ... But aaaah! It's hard to do that. It’s very hard to do that.”

The issue stimulus issue is sensitive for conservatives: After this story published, Lamborn in an emailed statement to POLITICO insisted that Trump's stimulus ideas would be much different than Obama's — and that “President-elect Trump’s proposals must be paid for completely in order to earn my support."

Republicans who have not embraced Trump's proposals have found a delicate way to say so. This week, GOP leaders insisted that Trump’s push for tariffs only really means he wants to keep jobs here and spur the economy. They say he can accomplish that goal through tax reform.

“It’s consistent with our goal to make American businesses and American products more competitive in a global economy,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said of Trump’s 35 percent tariff idea, when asked whether it was consistent with Ryan's own views. “And we believe the best way to achieve that goal is through comprehensive tax reform. “

Charlie Sykes, a “never Trump” conservative close with Ryan, said Capitol Hill Republicans’ refusal to push back on Trump is a dispiriting thing to watch.

"This was one of my great fears: That if Trump was elected, conservatives would fall in line behind his economic policies,” he told POLITICO. "If Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama had said what Trump said, free-market conservatives would have had their hair on fire. … Unfortunately, what you’re seeing now feels like a despairing shrug.”

Not everyone is giving Trump a pass. Sanford, the former South Carolina governor, said plainly he wouldn’t back Trump’s infrastructure spending plan. He called Trump’s comments “ill founded” and “dangerous from the standpoint of the need in the new government to have a defining governing strategy.”

“Not all of us are perfect with ... consistency, but there ought to be consistency of message, and I think this is at odds with what he said about wanting to limit government size and scope,” said Sanford, who backed Trump in the campaign but was occasionally critical of him.

Retiring members with nothing to lose are also more frank. Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.), a Transportation Committee member who’s leaving after six years in the House, called Trump’s “prime the pump” comments “absolutely ridiculous.”

“This is the Keynesian philosophy,” he said. “This is very much like Barack Obama in his first year. You can’t get to the economic [growth] models that he’s predicting. Even with the tax reform package they’re discussing. You’re not going to get there especially with his anti-trade rhetoric.”

Ribble predicted there’s “no chance” that Trump’s transportation program passes the House, saying, “There’s this dichotomy around here between Trump’s rhetoric and what these guys are going to be willing to do."

Years ago, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), a hard-line conservative and Freedom Caucus member, blasted Obama for killing jobs with his stimulus package. On Wednesday, he said government stimulus “can work” and it "depends on the form that the stimulus takes.” (He prefers they be delivered via tax cuts.)

Asked whether he could support tariff hikes and government incentives for individual companies like Carrier, Franks, an ardent Trump supporter, wavered — but only for a split-second.

“Listen, I’m probably not going to express some of the, ah, concerns that lie simmering beneath the surface,” Franks admitted. “But I will tell you, I’m more hopeful now than I have been in a long time.”

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Massie as a member of the Freedom Caucus.