Congressional Republicans are again affirming the age-old wisdom handed down to them by former Vice President Dick Cheney, to be applied whenever the GOP is in power: "Deficits don't matter."

That's the conclusion, anyway, from the fact that Senate Republicans in the wee hours of Thursday morning approved a budget resolution that would add some $9 trillion in federal debt over the next decade. Yes, after eight years of caterwauling, stonewalling and chucking around charges of socialism every time President Barack Obama wanted to spend a dime on anything, one of the first acts of the new GOP Senate (except for Sen. Rand Paul, who voted no along with the Democrats) was to approve a budget outline that culminates in the annual deficit hitting $1 trillion.

In fact, Obama's last budget submission, which the GOP didn't even let the his budget director testify about because they had deemed it so dead on arrival due to its debt load, included lower deficit and debt numbers than does the GOP's new resolution.

Oh, how the times have changed.

Except they haven't really changed at all. This is what the GOP does: Spends like the proverbial drunken sailor when in office and then gets religion on spending as soon as Republicans are out of office. Under President Bill Clinton, the budget desperately needed to be balanced. Under President George W. Bush, massive tax cuts, two wars and a prescription drug benefit went on the national credit card. Under Obama, it was once again austerity time.

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Now, in the age of Trump, budget concerns are back on the back burner. Even the ballyhooed House Freedom Caucus, which is supposedly obsessed with lowering spending, is game for the GOP's new game plan.

Their excuse for the moment is that the budget resolution was simply a vehicle for repealing Obamacare, not an actual budget, so the underlying numbers don't matter. But given the history and the priorities on which both they and the Trump administration agree, I wouldn't expect the GOP to hew closer to its professed principles when it comes time to actually dole out dollars.

To be clear, though, I'm not pointing this out because I'm worried about deficits or the national debt. To the contrary, in fact: It's actually advisable for the U.S. to run a bigger deficit now.

After all, there's still a healthy percentage of the country that could use work – and lots of work on important national projects that could be done – so borrowing at today's still-low interest rates to finance job creation sounds great. Fears of a debt crisis or some other economic catastrophe befalling the U.S. due to the budget are, as they have been for years, seriously overblown.

No, the reason to highlight the GOP's deficit hypocrisy is because we're trapped in a vicious cycle that needs to be broken: The GOP prevents necessary spending measures when it's the minority party, only to turn around and blow that money on tax cuts and other nonsense once it takes power. It's not the spending that's the problem; it's what's bought.

Instead of a bigger stimulus and other job programs or social safety net payments when they were vitally necessary during the depths of the Great Recession, we're going to get gobs of tax breaks lavished on the people who need them the least, at a moment when that cash will do next to nothing to help the economy. Even the Obamacare repeal itself will increase the deficit – and dump tax breaks on the rich – in order to provide health insurance to fewer people. That's not worth purchasing, thanks.

Of course, when Democrats win back Congress and the White House – as they inevitably will, someday – the GOP will once again turn into the party unwilling to spend any money on anything, because the debt is going to eat our children, or something. Rinse and repeat.

Part of the issue here is the credulousness with which many folks in the media world take Republican denunciations of the deficit. For instance, no matter how many times House Speaker Paul Ryan proves that, to him, the deficit is a secondary issue to tax cuts for the wealthy, he gets treated as a very serious wonk who wants nothing more than for the nation to balance its books. Political writers, with exceptions of course, tend to portray characters such as Ryan by the words they say, not the votes they take or the plans they propose. (Not that media coverage is a silver bullet in an era in which even the president-elect just yells "you are fake news" at outlets whose stories he doesn't like.)

For Democrats, then, the trap to avoid is becoming deficit-scolds themselves – tempting as it is, they shouldn't harp on the deficits and debt numbers the GOP runs up just because it's easy to score political points by harping about the deficit and debt.